Recovering the Feminine Voice in Nabokov's Lolita

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Winter 11-20-2020

This Is What Makes Us Girls: Recovering the Feminine Voice in Nabokov's Lolita

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Recommended Citation Wulforst, Amanda, "This Is What Makes Us Girls: Recovering the Feminine Voice in Nabokov's Lolita" (2020). English Theses. 1. https://repository.belmont.edu/english_theses/1

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Such a Nasty Woman: Reclaiming Lolita from Toxic Freudian Analysis and

Cultural Misconceptions ...... 5

1.1 Literary criticism ...... 6

1.2 Lolita’s modern significance ...... 9

Chapter 2: (You’re the) Devil in Disguise: Exposing Lolita’s Abuser and Contemplating

His Madness ...... 23

2.1 The man behind the mask and his past ...... 24

2.2 The monster removes his veil ...... 36

2.3 Unearth the devil, recover the girl ...... 43

Chapter 3: A Trauma to Remember: Lolita, Sally Horner, and the Realities of Sexual

Abuse ...... 47

3.1 The Sally Horner connection ...... 48

3.2 Lolita’s ceaseless cycle of trauma ...... 57

3.3 Death provides escapism for trauma ...... 64

Chapter 4: Run Lolita Run: A Subversion of Masculine Hegemony and Lolita’s Feminist

Resurrection ...... 68

4.1 Psychoanalytic feminism brings meaning to the text ...... 69

4.2 The uplifting feminist death ...... 76

4.3 Recovering Lolita in film and modern narratives ...... 80

4.4 The strength of survivor testimonies ...... 85 3

Chapter 5: Girl, I Believe You: Illuminating Survivor Testimonies to Mend the Cycle of

Sexual Trauma ...... 89

5.1 The significance of the survivor’s voice ...... 90

5.2 Survivors reclaim the narrative from abusers ...... 91

5.3 Reframing the narrative around sexuality and abuse ...... 94

Works Cited ...... 99

List of Illustrations

Figure 1: RAINN statistics on sexual assaults ...... 10

Figure 2: "Lolita" art, Lana Del Rey, Born to Die Album ...... 12

Figure 3: Lolita costume from website lolitain.com ...... 14

Figure 4: Actress, Alyssa Milano, shares “MeToo” post...... 15

Figure 5: Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1962 ...... 82

Figure 6: Lolita, directed by Adrian Lyne, 1997 ...... 83

Figure 7: Cuties movie poster comparisons ...... 97

Chapter 1: Such a Nasty Woman: Reclaiming Lolita from Toxic

Freudian Analysis and Cultural Misconceptions

The mind of the pedophile is an incomprehensible object to many ‘normal’ individuals. What makes a person attracted to young children and why do they feel the unfathomable compulsion to use children for sex? Vladimir Nabokov pens Lolita as a psychological investigation into the most renowned literary sexual predator, Humbert

Humbert. By framing the novel through a memoir composed by Humbert’s own hand,

Nabokov provides the reader with an in-depth inspection of his psyche and his irrational love for the twelve-year-old Lolita. However, Humbert’s narrative is intent on distorting the reader’s perception of him. He plays with the reader’s understanding of his mental neuroses and, by doing so, attempts to gain their sympathies. Humbert uses his traumatic childhood and psychoanalysis to convince the reader that his lust for girls stemmed from these events. With solipsism, he also depicts Lolita as a sensual creature who provokes her own objectification and as a woman who encourages his craving for her. Nabokov humanize this despicable character, thereby critiquing the reader’s ability to evaluate

Humbert because of his unreliable first-hand testimony; with this multifaceted text,

Nabokov confuses the reader and how they should feel about its unfurling contents. The reader who sympathizes with Humbert in lieu of Lolita, falls prey to his seductive words and comes face-to-face with their own morality. Humbert is not a good man and he knowingly, willingly kidnaps and rapes Lolita. Lolita is not a seductress and cannot exert any control over her situation. Yet, the sad fact is that many readers fall quarry to

Humbert’s rhetorical prowess and, because of the work, “the name Lolita has become synonymous with a sexualized view of young girls” (O’Neill 2008). Therefore, it is 6 imperative to exercise a new reading of this novel and upend modernity’s interpretations of both Humbert and Lolita. In this thesis, I explore how Humbert utilizes Freudian theory to justify his perversions and contort Lolita into the perpetrator, how trauma theory pits Humbert as a predator and Lolita as the disenfranchised victim, and how psychoanalytic feminism can fully recover Lolita’s voice despite Humbert’s narratorial control within the novel. Ultimately, I claim that feminist criticism reclaims Lolita from her subjugation and her trauma, transforming her into a resilient and formidable survivor against masculine sexual violence.

1.1 Literary criticism

Humbert employs psychoanalysis for his personal gain throughout this novel.

Sigmund Freud established this study as an attempt to uncover the inner mechanics of the human mind and treat mental neuroses. With this theory, Freud alleges that loss triggers conflict between the conscious and unconscious, yielding mental fixations. For instance,

Freud addresses two types of emotional responses to loss in “Mourning and

Melancholia.” In this essay, Freud states that mourning is a normal, conscious reaction to the libido’s forced detachment from a loved object; conversely, Freud depicts melancholia as the extreme psychological response to this loss. Most importantly, Freud notes that if a melancholiac chooses to abandon the object in favor of ambivalence, the

“new substitute-object” transforms into an outlet for retaliation (Freud 162). Therefore, the griever obtains pleasurable fulfilment from compulsive, sadistic torment on the self

(Freud 162). These responses reveal an important theme for grieving individuals: intense mental trauma sparks internal fragmentation and undermines the sufferer’s original identity. When applied to literature, Freudian theory allows writers and critics alike to 7 navigate the chasms of the mind, finding new and meaningful ways to examine life and understand artistic expression. Yet Humbert manipulates Freud to garner sympathies from his reader and explain away his sadistic fixation on young women. Humbert reveals his childhood traumas to the reader: his mother dies in his infancy, his aunt expires on the brink of his pubescence, and his father leaves him to start another family near his adulthood. As if these wounds are not enough, his great love, Annabel, succumbs to disease before he is able to culminate their relationship. For all these reasons, Humbert’s anguish impacts his psychosexual development and aggravates his emotional state. He also demonstrates how his fragmented mind leaves him attracted to girls or, as he refers to them, ‘nymphets.’ Humbert uses psychoanalysis to mask his evil from the reader, disguising his true monstrousness with science; through this criticism, Humbert conceals his crimes against Lolita and obscures her pain from the narrative. Psychoanalysis cannot fully unpack this novel as it concentrates exclusively on Humbert’s vindications for his criminalities and injures the reader’s understanding of Lolita.

On one hand, psychoanalysis serves as a means for justification for Humbert, allowing him to evade his criminalities and subsequent feelings of guilt; on the other hand, trauma theory provides the reader with a glimpse of Humbert as the villain and into the cause and effect of his pedophilia on his victim, Lolita. According to theorists, “a traumatic event – or ‘traumatic stressor’ – produces an excess of external stimuli and a corresponding excess of excitation in the brain” (Suleiman 276). A distressing event leaves the mind unable to manage or respond properly. The brain must find ways to cope with the tension, including dissociation or numbing (Suleiman 276). As a result, “trauma is not only a drama of a past event, but also, even primarily, a drama of survival” 8

(Suleiman 280). The reader can apply this literary lens to Nabokov’s novel to uncover the extent of Humbert’s violence against Lolita and the effects on her psyche. Throughout his narrative, Humbert blames his pedophilic nature on his past mental wounds and justifies his sexual attraction to young women to the reader. Furthermore, Humbert nurtures a testimony that shows the ‘love affair’ between Lolita and himself. He utilizes romantic rhetoric to describe his relationship with Lolita and to foster encouragement and understanding from the reader. Humbert asks the reader to disregard his felonies by accepting his word as absolute truth. Yet Humbert methodically, calculatedly abuses

Lolita throughout her childhood for his personal selfishness. Humbert intrudes in Lolita’s youth as a voyeur, entrapping her with his male gaze. He marries and subsequently murders her mother to fully own Lolita without intrusions. This diarist completely tarnishes Lolita by stealing her identity by taking away her given name, Dolores ‘Dolly’

Haze. He holds her captive on a cross-country journey out west, steals away her innocence by repeatedly raping her, and enshrines her most harrowing memories within his book. Lolita loses her life because of Humbert and feels many psychological consequences as a result of his predation. In a way, it seems that Lolita never transcends what happens to her in the memoir. However, this novel investigates the area where gender power constructs meet trauma, constructing a text that undermines Humbert’s narrative control.

Psychoanalysis and trauma theory generate insight into Humbert’s psyche as a criminal while psychoanalytic feminism triggers a dialogue about how Lolita, as a woman, is treated by men in this novel. The binary weighing the genders against one another must be broken for women to topple the patriarchy and for women to attain 9 equality. Freudian theory is rife with phallogocentric arguments the signify women as lesser than men and his case studies are written to prove such claims. Hélène Cixous criticizes Freud’s works and, instead, favors a feminist revision of his texts to give life to the feminine plight against toxic masculinity. Cixous crafts works that inspire the female voice and women writing. She asserts that, “Woman must put herself into the text – as into the world and into history – by her own movement” and must strive, “to break up, to destroy; and to foreseeable the unforeseeable, to project” (Cixous 242). Cixous believes that woman must write herself into the text and create a new language of her own, outside of the male created language of society that entraps her mind and body. Through her words, she can subvert male authority and achieve her own autonomy. Woman must destroy prior notion on womanhood, foresee a way past it, and project a new future for themselves. Comparably, Humbert obscures Lolita in his memoir. His unreliable narration and skillful rhetoric shroud Lolita within a work of his own machinations.

Lolita is a pawn to attract the readers to his story-telling and assuage his own guilty conscience. The reader must reclaim Lolita’s voice and undermine Humbert’s masculine oppression of her by framing Nabokov’s novel alongside Cixous’s feminist theories. A feminist lens drives this work into a modern dialogue about masculine violence and women’s effectual subjugation.

1.2 Lolita’s modern significance

Nabokov’s Lolita serves as a cultural artifact that critiques the fetishization and subjugation of young women in American society. However, modern American culture propagates and glorifies Lolita as a sensual woman. Perpetuating the stereotype of young women as sexualized creatures encourages their objectification by men and even 10 seemingly endorses abuse of women because of their sensuality. While Nabokov published this novel in 1955, the thoughts and ideas he captured within the text are still relevant today - approximately sixty-five years later. Recent United States Department of

Justice statistics indicate concerning numbers for women: “National epidemiological data indicate that 1-in-5 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, most often by a male perpetrator” (Campbell 2019). At least twenty percent of women will suffer from sexual assault by a male predator in their lifetime and, in the United States, at least one

American is sexually assaulted every seventy-three seconds.

Figure 1: RAINN statistics depicting assaults against women every 73 seconds in the

United States in 2020, https://www.rainn.org/about-sexual-assault

Conversely, “only five out of every 1,000 rapists,” or 0.5%, will be incarcerated for their crimes (RAINN). While the number of attacks decreased since 1993, the numbers of attacks versus condemned rapists are still exceedingly high and call attention to prevalence of masculine violence against women (RAINN). Moreover, if the reader examines Lolita closely, they will observe that Nabokov’s novel provides a reminder of the effects of sexual abuse like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and dissociation. Lolita suffers immensely at Humbert’s hands as she loses her mother, 11 childhood, innocence, name, and her identity. Lolita also fails to achieve a normal adulthood because of pedophilia on her psyche that serve as a memento of her pain.

While Lolita endures specific impressions from her trauma, the Rape, Abuse & Incest

National Network (RAINN) cites that survivors also experience additional effects including, self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, panic attacks, sexually transmitted diseases, sleep disorders, and many more (RAINN).

Modern American culture sexualizes women and emulates it through music, films, fashion, and even literature, which illuminates their objectification in society. For instance, Lana Del Rey’s appeal is a technicolor version of 1940-50s America, sentimentalizing this era as a time which promotes ‘free’ women in love with bad boys and where life in the west is an exciting adventure. As a result, it is not surprising as to why Del Rey clings to Nabokov’s Lolita. Specifically, this singer overlays references to

Nabokov’s contentious novel over a poppy beat in her songs, “Lolita” and “Off to the

Races” from her Born to Die album. “Lolita” boasts lyrics like “I know that I'm a mess with my long hair / And my suntan, short dress, bare feet / I don't care what they say about me, what they say about me / Because I know that it's L-O-V-E / You make me happy, you make me happy” (Del Rey 02:47-03:01). Del Rey transforms Lolita into an erotic woman who embraces her sweetheart despite what anyone else might think of their relationship. The final bridge of the song envisions Lolita as a romance, where the female protagonist is actually in love with her villainous captor and croons a love tune to him.

Del Rey also fosters idyllic Lolita imagery with fashion. She likens her own appearance to Lolita in figure 2, adorning sunglasses similar to those that Sue Lyon wore in her 12 portrayal in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film adaptation and producing a seductive nonchalance for the audience.

Figure 2: "Lolita" art, Lana Del Rey, Born to Die Album

Similarly, Del Rey plays with the famous opening lines of Lolita in the bridge of her track, “Off to the Races.” She sings, “Light of my life, fire in my loins / Be a good baby, do what I want / Light of my life, fire in my loins / Gimme them gold coins / Gimme them coins” (Del Rey 00:36-00:47). She conjures dark imagery about the relationship between a young woman and a possessive, middle-aged man when she evokes Humbert’s introduction to his memoir. At the same time, she also references how Lolita made

Humbert pay her money for sex. Del Rey metamorphoses Lolita’s continuous rape into a 13 rich, glamorous, lifestyle to be idolized by young listeners. Furthermore, the final verse of the song solidifies Lolita as a dreamy, amorous archetype who just wants to love her man without the world’s interference:

My old man is a thief, and/ I'm gonna stay and pray with him till the end /

But I trust in the decision of the law / To watch over us / Take him when he

may, if he may / I'm not afraid to say / That I'd die without him / Who else

is gonna put up with me this way? / I need you, I breathe you, I'll never

leave you / They would rue the day, I was alone without you (Lana Del Rey)

This artist takes Lolita’s trauma and turns it into a catchy, passionate melody, resuming

Humbert’s cycle of abuse into the 21st century. Del Rey exacerbates Humbert’s power over Lolita by painting her as a carefree spirit, in love with her demented man and willing to die for him. It seems that Del Rey promotes this abusive relationship with her songs and interpretation of Nabokov’s novel. However, in an Instagram post, Del Rey asserts that opposite, “picked up this theme, insisting she was writing ‘about the realities of what we are all now seeing are very prevalent emotionally abusive relationships all over the world’” (Savage 2020). Del Rey’s artistic preferences are her own to choose and create, yet her artistry perpetuates a harmful reading of Lolita and further engenders the sexualization of the young woman in Nabokov’s text.

Idealization of the ‘Lolita’ figure even reaches Japan’s fashion subculture, spinning Nabokov’s heroine into a style symbol of innocent sweetness. This genre blends

Victorian fashion with lollipop, childlike cuteness to create the Lolita-look and was a reaction against Japan’s strict adherence to gender roles and find solace in the beautiful 14 innocence of childhood. This trend, while subversive in its own right, causes issues with objectification of the female body.

Figure 3: Lolita costume from website lolitain.com

Lolitas came to fame in Japan prior to Nabokov’s work being translated into Japanese and the film adaption. The name’s origin seems unknown yet was “chosen by designers and participants” brands without fully knowing the implications (Deerstalker Pictures

02:19-03:20). Adults wear voluminous dress skirts that skate at the knees, ankle socks or tights, and tie the piece together with flats with bows or high heels. While the culture refers to youthful charm, the fashion statement produces a negative connation when compared to Nabokov’s novel, which toyed with the sexualization of young girls. As a result, lolitas face backlash for fueling pedophilic fantasies about and desires for children. 15

Alternatively, the MeToo movement publicly calls for attention to, and fights against, sexual harassment and abuse. This movement prompted widespread exposure of predators and demonstrates the vast reaches of sexual abuse in modern society. Tarana

Burke founded an organization to support women and help them heal after sexual assault.

In 2006, Burke initiated the MeToo movement to empower women who face sexual violence. In 2017, Burke’s efforts were taken to new heights. Following allegations of

Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet” on October 15,

2017 (Pflum 2018). Thousands of women worldwide retweeted Milano’s post, sharing their experiences with masculine aggression against women and generating a new fervor to Burke’s awareness platform.

Figure 4: Actress, Alyssa Milano, shares “MeToo” post on Twitter on October 15, 2017

Woman called out bosses, friends, family, strangers, and even famous figures. These women insisted that their voices be heard and called for justice against the widespread disease of masculine aggression. Therefore, MeToo, “became a widespread battle cry for those seeking to show that sexual harassment is not an isolated incident, and nor is sexual assault rare. The results were far-reaching – dozens of powerful men accused, many of them toppled, a handful criminally charged” (Pflum 2018). Women encouraged each other to confront the patriarchy and find justice. They advocated autonomy for themselves outside of the traumas they endured at the hands of men.

Powerful men use their resources against women to suffocate any attempt to speak out against them; however, the collective female voice can bring about justice for these women. For example, Harvey Weinstein was the most prominent producer in the

American film industry and, as such, was an individual who was well-respected by his peers. However, more than eighty women came forward with sexual assault allegations against Weinstein in October 2017. These accusations incited the MeToo movement to propagate heavily on social media platforms like Twitter, inspiring thousands of women to share their own stories of sexual abuse and also prompting many to call out other famous, influential men for similar cruelties. On May 25, 2018, Weinstein was charged with “rape, criminal sex act, sex abuse, and sexual misconduct” and arrested by police

(“Harvey Weinstein”). The two women who brought charges against him, Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann, presented testimony of their rapes to the jury. Annabella Sciorra,

Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff, and Lauren Young also testified in the court case as character witnesses against Weinstein and to establish a pattern of similar past behavior 17 by the mogul. Throughout the trial, the six women shared their individual experiences, yet all women recalled how Weinstein utilized his power and connections to both attack and silence them. Finally, in February 2020, a Manhattan jury found Weinstein guilty of two felony sex crimes and, “for many, the trial was a crucial test in the effort to hold powerful men accountable for sexual harassment in the workplace” (Ransom 2020).

While not all of the women subjected to Weinstein’s assaults found justice for the transgressions against them, his sentence was a “watershed moment” for them and women everywhere (Ransom 2020). Tarana Burke comments on Weinstein’s incarceration: “’Most of us will never see the inside of the courtroom, but these women got to take the stand, look him in the eye and say, ‘You did this to me,’ […] ‘He will forever be guilty. That’s a thing we have’” (Ransom 2020). Burke asserts that most women will not find justice for crimes against them, but Weinstein’s guilty verdict was a step in the right director for the survivors and for females everywhere who face cruelty at the hands of men. The six valiant women took to the stand, facing their predator, and publicly accused him – their voices heard.

Weinstein was not the only prominent man toppled by the MeToo movement and he will not be the last as the movement continues to gain traction well into 2020. Jeffrey

Epstein amassed wealth and power not only as an American financier (and conman) but through his connections to elite socialites, princes, business and Hollywood moguls, and politicians. Like Weinstein, Epstein used his money and powerful connections to intimidate and manipulate his victims:

’He would find out they have no home, no car, that they need a place to live,

and he would provide a place to live,’ Edwards said. ‘He can get you to the 18

best doctors. Sometimes he would do that and sometimes he wouldn’t do

that, but the promise was real because as soon as you walk into his house

and see there are legitimate cooks, chefs, and assistants, everybody catering

to him — it gives this air of legitimacy. I mean, everybody in this whole

entire mansion can’t possibly be running an illegal sex trafficking operation,

right?’ (Brown 2019)

Epstein would find girls and exploit their vulnerabilities like poverty and broken homes.

He would guarantee to these young women that they would be taken care of and he ‘only asked’ for sexual favors in return. He also used Ghislaine Maxwell and his own pyramid scheme to find girls, which included sending previous victims out to procure others with the promise of money. With this system of abuse, it is difficult for the authorities to understand the magnitude of Epstein’s sexual abuse and trafficking. However, it seems that many individuals were aware of what was happening at Epstein’s residences and failed to intervene; for example, survivor, Sarah Ransome, recalls that, “’Not one person helped us,’ said Sarah Ransome […] ‘Everyone around us had to know, because we looked so broken. But no one did anything’” (Brown 2019). Ransome remembers that no one helped her – even though they had to know what was going on. Ransome and may others were caught in his web of exploitation without a way out and without help.

Finally, Epstein was arrested on federal charges on July 6, 2019 after the FBI identified thirty-six women who were victims of his sexual abuse (Carlisle 2019). Approximately a month later, Epstein committed suicide in his jail cell on August 10, 2020. His survivors will never be able to publicly accuse him and get the justice that they deserve. However, the U.S. District Judge Richard Berman allowed twenty-three of Epstein survivors to take 19 the stand to speak against what happened to them. These women were finally able to have their voices heard in the courtroom. Virginia Roberts Guiffre stated that, while Epstein is dead and the trial against him is over, her job is not complete: “’The reckoning must not end. It must continue […] He did not act alone, and we the victims know that’” (Carlisle

2019). Giuffre calls for all of Epstein’s friends and fellow abusers to also be punished for their crimes. All individuals involved must be charged, arrested, and tried.

R. Kelly stole the hearts of rhythm and blues lovers world-wide, but he hid dark pedophilic secrets in his closet; pending the court hearing, his victims are still waiting for closure and healing. Kelly used his power in the music industry to control young women and he started his power trip incredibly early in his career. For instance, in a secret wedding in 1994, a twenty-seven-year-old Kelly married the fifteen-year-old Aaliyah

(Savage 2020). Subsequent to his annulment, Kelly was a part of several lawsuits with

Tiffany Hawkins, Tracy Sampson, Patrice Jones, and Montina Woods who stated that he sexually abused them when they were teenagers, videotaped sexual acts performed against them, or forcing them to get an abortion. Tracy Sampson advised that, "He often tried to control every aspect of my life including who I would see and where I would go,’” (Savage 2020). Like Weinstein and Epstein, Kelly kept young girls under his influence. Yet Kelly took his manipulation more personally by dictating their every move for them. Kelly also became part of an FBI investigation when they acquired a sex tape of himself with an underage girl. He was subsequently charged in 2002 with 21 counts of child pornography that never stuck, indicted with an additional 14 counts from 2002 to

2004 that were also thrown out, taken to court in a lawsuit filed by his ex-wife because he knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease, and further allegations from Jerhonda 20

Pace who broke her non-disclosure agreement to tell the world that he raped her while she was underage and tortured her (Savage 2020). Meanwhile, Kelly released the

“wildly successful Trapped in the Closet album” and was even “nominated for an Image

Award by the NAACP” (Savage 2020). Numerous women suffered at Kelly’s hands, yet he continued to remain a successful, accoladed artist. Society seemingly discounted the narrative of cruelty circling the singer. In 2018, the #MuteRKelly campaign began and prompted labels and stations to stop promoting Kelly’s songs – twenty-four years after his first incident of sexual contact with a minor, Aaliyah (Savage 2020). Kelly infamously stated, “’Only God can mute me […] Am I supposed to go to jail or lose my career because of your opinion?’” (Savage 2020). Kelly refused to admit to wrongdoing and professed his innocence, even though many women rose to speak their truth against him. Roughly a year later, their voices were heard; in 2019, Illinois and New York indicted Kelly with federal charges such as sex trafficking, child pornography, and obstruction (Savage 2020). Kelly is currently awaiting trial, along with his victims who yearn to tell their stories and for justice against this predator.

Rich, influential men like Weinstein, Epstein, and Kelly perpetuate the gender power dynamic between men and women, as well as the account of violence against women. Women become victims to them, falling one by one at their feet. As a society, it is time to focus on the female voice and let the masculine predators fade to the background. Survivor testimonies are an important outlet to give command back to women and so they can preserve their own stories. Leigh Gilmore and Elizabeth Marshall state that, “It often seems that girlhood has congealed into a single sad story in which imperiled girls await rescue, with limited hope or success” (Gilmore 667). It is necessary 21 to unravel this narrative and fashion a new mode of understanding women as victims in literary texts. They are not girls who casualties awaiting saving from the justice system.

They are women who encountered atrocities and who are trying to heal from them. Their testimonies allow them to take back their voice and save themselves: “The user of the young girl as a narrator positions the reader as a learner alongside [the narrator] rather than as the student to be taught by the adult authors […] The horrors of violence and gendered oppression are revealed to […] the reader/viewer simultaneously” (Gilmore

681). A male authorship and analysis obscure the reader from the female’s suppression and blurs the truth of their representation. Through a female perspective and authorial control, the reader can gain the realities of the cruelty committed against her by men.

Nabokov’s Lolita s a psychological investigation into the most renowned literary sexual predator, Humbert. With this brilliant work, it is important to be aware of society’s existing relationship with Lolita and how its morphed throughout the last sixty-five years.

Lolita is no longer an innocent girl who is subjected to Humbert’s pedophilic actions.

Instead, she is interpreted by culture as the ‘nymphet’ and her sexuality is used against her as a means of objectification. Critic, Elizabeth Patnoe, solicits the question: “Why didn’t the Lolita myth evolve in a way that more accurately reflects Nabokov’s Lolita?

Why isn’t the definition of ‘Lolita’ ‘a molested adolescent girl’ instead of a ‘seductive’ one?” (Patnoe 83). Nabokov’s multifaceted text supports misinterpretations despite the proof he gives his readers about Humbert’s criminalities and Lolita’s victimization.

Through the mind of a pedophile, the reader surveys how he uses his narrative to blend and shape truth to fit his intentions. Humbert uses skillful rhetoric and Freudian to convince the reader that he did not choose to fulfill his pedophilic urges, that he loves 22

Lolita, and that he is not to be solely blamed for the events in the novel. Yet Humbert’s words merely mask his monstrousness. He kidnaps and rapes Lolita, seeking to possess her body, identity, and selfhood completely. My thesis will convey how Humbert utilizes language and psychoanalysis to conceal his crimes. I will also demonstrate how trauma theory marks Humbert as the perpetrator and, providing a comprehensive review of the ways in which Lolita suffers at his hands throughout the memoir. And I will uncover how to retrieve Lolita’s overpowered voice and how psychoanalytic feminism recaptures

Lolita’s voice despite Humbert’s control within the novel. A reader can inherently impose the binary opposition of male versus female in this text and, in doing so,

“interprets and presents her oppositionally” (Patnoe 83). As Humbert writes, the ‘Lolita’ sexuality becomes a danger to all men. Yet by retrieving Lolita from the text, she can tell her own story and conquer her victimization. Lolita can finally be free from Humbert’s demons and express herself with her own modes of expression. She will no longer be ensnared in his wicked web of masculine dominance, trapped within her all-consuming trauma.

Chapter 2: (You’re the) Devil in Disguise: Exposing Lolita’s Abuser

and Contemplating His Madness

Sigmund Freud asserts that intrapsychic tensions between the conscious and unconscious can produce psychological issues, including melancholy. Freud classifies melancholia as the extreme anguish over a lost ideal deeply buried in the unconscious; without an object-cathexis, the newly freed libido forms an identification between the ego and the lost object, irrevocably altering the ego (Freud 153). Similarly, Nabokov inundates Lolita with suffering, exposing its causes and repercussions through the protagonist, Humbert Humbert, and his narrative. In Humbert’s developmental years, he loses his mother, aunt, father, and childhood love, Annabel: his mother dies in a tragic picnic accident when he was three, his aunt passes away after his sixteenth birthday, his father abandons him for a new family in France as he is nearing adulthood, and Annabel succumbs to typhus after their fruitless, uncompensated summer together. While each loss impacts Humbert’s psychological growth, Annabel’s death ushers in an anguish that alters his psyche permanently. Annabel signifies Humbert’s final close, unsuccessful relationship in a string of juvenile comeuppances. Failing to consummate his connection with her, he clings to her youthlike shade, which haunts his unconscious and incites his attraction to young girls. As Humbert’s obsession with women-children 1 grows and takes shape in his conscious, his mental state corrodes and his self-hood fragments. He commits sordid crimes in order to satiate his compulsion and his narrative becomes erratic as he vindicates his actions to himself, as well as the reader. Humbert’s pedophilic preoccupation and self-fragmentation through his elaborate testimony, as I demonstrate,

1 Humbert explicitly refers to young women he finds attractive as ‘women-children’ or ‘nymphets’ throughout the novel. 24 arise from his past wounds, his inability to cope with his misery, and his compulsive need for control. Yet, Nabokov’s coded language, I claim, is confusing, seductive, and unreliable, simultaneously serving as a warning and an invitation. Such an analysis is relevant to understand the different masks used to conceal the inherent evils of masculine hegemony and its impact.

2.1 The man behind the mask and his past

Lolita opens with scientific, logical rhetoric to encourage, perhaps ironically, a psychoanalytic reading of the narrative that follows. The novel begins with a foreword by the editor, John Ray, Jr, who introduces the reader to H.H. (Humbert Humbert), his crime, and the ensuing memoir he wrote while in captivity for his offence. Ray laments that, “the special experience ‘H.H.’ describes with such despair; that had our demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 1947, to a competent psychopathologist, there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this book” (4). Ray fashions a sympathetic lens for the reader to regard Humbert with because the introduction cites untreated psychological issues as the central factor leading to the crimes depicted throughout the memoir. He postulates that Humbert is a criminal because of his psychology and states that, if Humbert sought intervention prior to the events, the kidnapping, pedophilia, and murder would have been avoided. Ray holds great confidence in psychotherapy and, as a specialist in this field, the reader trusts his assertions. As a result, the reader begins the memoir with Ray’s interpretations in mind, searching for justification for Humbert’s criminal behavior and thereby dissociating him from his inner maliciousness; while psychoanalysis can provide the reader with insight into Humbert’s unhinged mind, it does trap the reader into actually blaming him for his 25 sins and considering the victim, Lolita. Also, some critics equate Ray as an extension on

Humbert’s narrative. Julian Connolly agrees in her chapter, “Humbert’s Memoir,

Nabokov’s Novel: A Reader’s Analysis,” elaborating that “The style of Ray’s commentary alternates between the prosaic and the poetic” (69). For instance, this editor finds beauty in Humbert’s literary piece, eagerly applauding the memoir for its craft and genius while simultaneously and perfunctorily expressing the general importance of

Freudian theory within the work. He condemns and uplifts Humbert at the same time, all the while obfuscating the effects of Humbert’s actions. Like Humbert, the preface fails to provide Lolita with a voice, further victimizing her and laying the foundation of her continued cycle of abuse for the sake of art. Ray’s rhetorical shifts sets up the novel’s chaotic tone and represent the instability of the narrative voice throughout the work.

However, some critics disagree with this perspective and proclaim that Nabokov uses a tongue-in-cheek tone in the foreword to mock Freudian thought. For instance, John

Ingham states that “Nabokov may parody psychoanalysis to counter the threat it poses to the autonomy of the artist and the magic of art” (28). Ingham presumes that the foreword is a satire to stave off presumed character interiorities, preserve the author’s freedoms and uphold the charm of the work. Critics like Ingham believe that Nabokov critiques Freud because his theories are detrimental to authorial intent and the characters’ aesthetic contributions to the work. While some critics lambast Freudian analysis of this novel, the foreword, as well as the entire work, inspires this sort of investigation into the psyche of its characters. On one hand, the foreword explicitly calls out the importance of psychotherapy and how it could have prevented Humbert’s repugnant actions and

Lolita’s devastating conclusion; with therapy, Humbert could have experienced a 26 catharsis that quelled the effects of his mental illness. On the other hand, psychoanalysis allows Humbert to disguise his evil and rationalize his offenses. Humbert begins his memoir with a description of all the events that triggered his mental afflictions, leaving the reader to believe that what happens throughout the work to be not his fault all because

Ray swayed the reader with his introductory remarks in the preface.

Ray concludes the foreword by further pointing out that the novel is also a warning that cautions the reader of the imminent dangers that emanate from deep within the unconscious: “As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader; […] they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils” (5). The editor states that the reader gleams a ‘moral lesson’ from

Humbert’s tale because they can absorb the beauty of the text without surrendering to the narrator’s evil perversions and pleas for compassion. Yet John Ray’s statement extends literary accolades to a pedophilic and morally corrupt author, calling into question of whether a writer’s corruption can inhibit their prowess and literary skill. Nabokov weaves this contradictory language into the introduction, advising the reader to take notice of the severity of Humbert’s actions and their import outside of literary significance. As the tale unfolds, the reader understands the impact of Humbert’s past on his current self but, more importantly, also examines his narrative and artistic techniques for different meanings and learns the multi-faceted depths of this narrator.

Humbert’s familial loss etches into his unconscious, carving out pockets of trauma that will develop into large craters and severely impact his mental state. Humbert first encounters death at an early age: “My very photogenic mother died in a freak 27 accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set” (7). Humbert’s declaration of his mother’s death seems shocking, flippant, and a sign of his egoism (Connolly 72). Nevertheless, he was a young child when his mother died and memories of her are only formed through looking back through archives of her picturesque face. He does not have memories of his mother and lacks the warmth and motherly comforts as a result of her tragic death. Humbert does not feel whole with her absence and does not have a connection to, or understanding of, the feminine as a result of his mother’s passing. According to Freud, a child’s first attachment is during their oral psychosexual development stage where they first attach to their mother’s breast (Freud

188). Freud proclaims that children between the ages of two and five then enter the phallic psychosexual development stage and begin to experience sexual curiosity as their libido and ego emerge (Freud 188). A male child fixates on his mother, clinging to his infantile object-cathexis with his mother’s breasts and spurring on “the final shape of his erotic life” (Freud 188). Humbert loses his mother in the primacy of his phallic stage and, therefore, he seeks out an alternate to gratify his emerging libido. Motherly loss stunts Humbert’s sexuality at the start of his psychosexual phase and initiates the start of his neuroses. After Humbert’s mother dies, he attempts to fasten himself to his Aunt

Sybil, his ‘mother-replacement’ and the only feminine figure that remains in his life. His aunt also meets a grim fate: “Aunt Sybil had pink-rimmed azure eyes and a waxen complexion. She wrote poetry. She was poetically superstitious. She said she knew she would die soon after my sixteenth birthday, and did” (8). Humbert’s aunt correctly 28 assumes the timing of her death, leaving Humbert without any semblance of motherly comfort and affection. And, once again, Humbert’s libido grieves for its feminine fixation. Humbert’s narrative shows the reader that this lack disrupts his maturing libido and his growing consciousness, irrevocably changing how he considers and responds to women throughout the course of his life, and the memoir.

On the brink of adulthood, his remaining motherlike influence meets her untimely fate and leaves Humbert with only his father for comfort. Consequently, Humbert’s father became his world: “He, mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking, taught me to swim and dive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Misérables, and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lady-friends [who][…] shed precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness”

(8). His father teaches him to play water sports and inspires his love of romantic novels; also, his father’s mistresses “come and go in his life without names” but, regardless,

Humbert still loves his father, his only familial link. Despite his mother’s and aunt’s absence, Humbert seems to prosper under his father’s attention. Humbert hears murmurs about his motherly lack, but he buries her dark memory in the deepest reaches of his mind, instead focusing on his father’s attention. His father abandons him for another family and, eventually, leaves him all together. Nabokov emphasizes the importance of the family, especially fathers in numerous interviews: he was a “a deeply moral man and

[with] a profoundly moral body of work. Nabokov noted in his journal: ‘There are moral principles passed down from father to son, from generation to generation.’ He strove to express these moral principles in his fiction – and in his life” (Goldman 2). Per Goldman, fathers play an important role in handing down guiding moral lessons to their sons. 29

Growing up, Humbert’s father taught him sports and about works like Don Quixote, but any moral lessons are excluded from his narrative. However, the La Mancha knight shares Humbert’s penchant for erotic preoccupations, disillusionment, and self- destruction. Cervantes’s thematic devices seem to mirror Humbert’s later ‘romantic’ leanings and disastrous inclinations throughout the text; in their time together, Humbert’s father provided him with a foundation for his later abuses. Nabokov’s exclusion of a solid fatherly presence in Humbert’s childhood in this text reveals that the narrator is predisposed to dubious ethical standards, which is further exacerbated by the melancholia triggered by his father’s departure. Humbert is familiar with loss, but nothing prepares him for losing his childhood love.

Humbert’s love for Annabel is intense and her death is a devastating blow to his psyche; this loss impacts him more so than any other experiences in his childhood and incontrovertibly traumatizes him for life. His memory clings to Annabel: “There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open […] and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, the objective absolutely optical of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors

(and this is how I see Lolita)” (9). Within the novel’s first chapter, Humbert advises the reader that his memory of Annabel is vivid and heavenly. He recalls her image with certainty and immediacy. While Humbert’s memory of his family is succinct and matter of fact, his portrayal of his time spent with Annabel is elaborate and poetic. The narrative’s tone completely shifts and displays Humbert’s deep and consuming feelings for Annabel. Humbert depicts a soulmate-love to describe his relationship with Annabel, stating, “ 30

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with

each other; hopelessly I should add, because that frenzy of mutual

possession might be been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and

assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were,

unable even to mate as slum children would have to easily had an

opportunity to do. (10)

The language is lulling and magical, coinciding with Humbert’s feelings for Annabel.

Their love takes over their psyches and sparks a furious, lustful need for bodily satisfaction. The poetic narrative immediately concludes when Annabel dies, their passionate love left unconsummated: “four months later she died of typhus in Corfu”

(11). Their love affair is told in a grandiose fashion, but the romantic language concludes with a final, brief sentence. Annabel passes at a distance, but her end reverberates in

Humbert’s mind and quells his sentimental love. Through the layer of these memories, the reader experiences Humbert’s soul, and identity, cracking as he loses himself to grief.

Dale Peterson declares that Nabokov: “eloquently and obsessively connected the successful evocation of memorable images with the sensation of absence” (104). Peterson claims that Nabokov’s works combine descriptive imagery with the feeling of loss, a key factor in mental depression. Humbert’s already unstable libido adheres to Annabel. With her death, the libido forms connection between the loss of his ideal woman and his ego, conjuring a significant blow to his mind and triggering melancholia. He also exhibits depression’s key features include violent reactions like “profoundly painful dejection, abrogation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in 31 self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment” (Freud 153). Specifically, Humbert, cannot love and is prone to self-hate.

He claims to love Lolita, but his love punishes and abuses her. While he attempts to cast off his shame throughout his memoir, he also demonstrates moments of clarity. These responses to mental injuries reveal an important theme for grieving individuals: intense mental trauma sparks internal fragmentation and undermines the sufferer’s original identity. Humbert’s loss triggers intense melancholia and his psyche begins to yearn to fill the hole created by Annabel’s death.

As Humbert continues his story, he explains to the reader that Annabel rests deep in his unconscious, inciting yearnings for women-children that reminded him of her to the point where his self-hood becomes reliant on these obsessions. Humbert outrightly posits:

in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began; or was

my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of inherent

singularity? When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and

so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the

analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each

visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex

prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and

fateful way Lolita began with Annabel. I also know that the shock of

Annabel’s death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer,

made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance. (11)

Nabokov implicitly utilizes psychoanalysis in this passage, presenting Humbert’s interiority as he analyzes the neuroses linked to his troubled present. Annabel haunts 32

Humbert’s mind; through self-analysis, he uncovers that the summer is when his life began to unravel, consciously slipping into madness. Once Annabel dies, he believes that his psyche is forever changed. Though its many years after her death, Humbert imagines that he can still feel Annabel’s essence merging with his own. The narrative eloquently and romantically describes Humbert’s descent into melancholia through the visual of their minds merging as one unit, which represents Annabel’s fixation to his ego.

Consequently, this narrator postulates that this mental trauma corrupts, destabilizes his identity, and irrevocably alters his sexuality. Because of his deep mental wounds and fixation on Annabel’s youthful spirit, Humbert compulsively struggles to obtain his ideal once more and fixates on young girls in compensation. Despite Humbert’s narrative, the reader must question: how reliable is his narrative? Humbert’s rhetoric dazzles with hyperbolic introspection and persuasive lamentation, seemingly manipulating the reader with his scientific knowledge and application to his youthful ‘despair.’ Additionally.

Nabokov lambasted Freudian thought because he deemed it an “ignorant” approach to understand the complexity of human mind (Kwon 69). Many critics even argue that

Nabokov uses psychoanalysis in this novel to criticize the psychiatrist’s application in literature and its characters. One critic, Joanna Trzeciak, writes that, “With Freud the dominant hermeneutic force of his times, Nabokov had little choice to engage him” (65).

Freud is the founding father of psychology and is even a major player in literary theory.

Nabokov, as a writer, spotlights the complexity of the human mind in his works and attempts to demonstrate its unknowability (Trzeciak 65). Nabokov also heavily incorporates psychological themes and imagery in his works, which automatically promotes psychoanalytic readings. Even so, the modern reader may gleam more from the 33 novel should they disregard authorial intent and scrutinize the work’s experientiality. As

Humbert explains his criminal deeds, the reader can ascertain the importance of dissecting his actions in relation to his past mental injuries as the two are fundamentally entangled together. The reader must also be aware that Humbert is a well-versed, intelligent narrator who seeks to control the memoir’s audience; for that reason, the reader must take caution when Humbert psychoanalyzes himself and cautiously pull apart his words to determine deeper meanings.

Humbert’s pedophilic fixations become even more grotesque as he enters manhood and uses his position to assert his dominance over these girls, satiating his unconscious pleas for relief from his mental pain. Like Poe, Nabokov focuses on “sexual peculiarities” throughout Lolita (Coviello 858). Nabokov venerated Poe’s Southern

Gothic works and Peter Coviello likens Nabokov to Poe in his essay, asserting that both authors use perversions like pedophilia, “as the engine that sustains, through a range of permutation, the ongoing drama of sexual promise and sexual frustration” (Coviello 858).

Moreover, Poe and Nabokov use the taboo metaphorically, crafting pedophiles with extreme anxiety regarding gender difference. Poe’s and Nabokov’s characters express frustration with women throughout their works and align with pedophilia as a means for exercising control over their own sexuality. Based on the characters’ narration, they employ their will over children because of their anxiety concerning adult women and their equivalence to men; in doing so, they level out the perceived power structures between the sexes. At first, Humbert’s male gaze commits odious crimes against young girls. Humbert admits: “Now and then I took advantage of the acquaintances I had formed among social workers and psychotherapists to visit in their company various 34 institutions, such as orphanages and reform schools, where pale pubescent girls with matted eyelashes could be stared at in perfect impunity remindful of that granted one in dreams” (13-14). Like a true predator, Humbert stalks his youthful prey and searches for his ideal victim. At university, Humbert begins to study psychology before he ultimately changes his major to literature. His short time with psychology students allows him to use his school connections to freely observe his youthful target. Humbert’s narrative turns poetic once again as he beings to ruminate on the young girls. For example, he constructs a name for the young girls he peruses and employs mythological language in order to elucidate their siren-call. These girls are spellbinding and otherworldly and he mythologizes them: “the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphets from such coevals of hers as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where Lolita plays with her likes” (14). Humbert depicts these

‘nymphets’ as dark faerie creatures, full of malcontent. His language is prosaic, but the underlying malevolence is scandalous; while the words inspire beautiful imagery, the girls transform into charming but mischievous and sinister beings that corrupt man. By shaping these young girls as devious, fae-like beings, Humbert transfers any sort of blame from himself and onto the girls, attempting to assuage any guilt for his neurotic, deviant behaviors.

Humbert alludes that his childhood trauma triggers self-destructiveness within his psyche because of his inability to cope with the pressures associated with losing Annabel.

Throughout the narrative, Humbert does not seem to be negatively affected by his mental wounds or his monstrous appetite. In select scenes, Humbert is angry with himself 35 because of his desires and laments that he cannot help himself. In these chaotic throes,

Humbert’s lofty language becomes introspective and he examines his mind through the lens of Freud’s theories:

While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body’s plea.

One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic.

Taboos strangulated me. Psychoanalysts wooed me with the

pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. The fact that to me the only object of

amorous tremor were sisters of Annabel […] At other times I would tell

myself that it was all a question of attitude, that there was really nothing

wrong in being moved to distraction by girl-children. (16)

First, the manic memoirist calls upon Freud as his mind breaks, trying to understand the cause and effects of his obsessions. He then claims the girls light his once darkened ideal by likening them to Annabel’s ghostly memory. Based on his own self-analysis, he states that losing Annabel causes him to search for something similar to his ideal love to satiate his libido and damaged ego. He affixes these young women to an ideal state and obsessives over them. Meanwhile, Humbert intertwines romantic language with psychology, his writing style prosaic and matter-of-face as he persuades the reader why he is not at fault for his pedophilic predilections and supports these reasons with scientific evidence. Humbert continues and cries that social mores keep him from what his body desires. Despite his protestations, Humbert tries to negotiate with himself, to justify his deviant lust, advising that, “Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson frock, and this was in

1274” (17). Dante Alighieri, loved a nine-year-old girl, Beatrice. Humbert cites literary 36 references to normalize his case and cast blame from himself for his maddening desires.

He also references historical figures like Queen Nefertiti and King Akhenaten, India, and

Petrarch and Laureen to assert his case to the reader. Moreover, he contemplates why the

United States and England condemn sex with children if many other cultures still participate in this act. As a result, Humbert makes the reader, and himself, question why sleeping with, or obsessing over, young girls is a modern, social taboo. With logical reasons like historical and cultural citations, Humbert also helps quell his conscience and self-destructive thoughts, if only for a moment in time. Yet, Humbert’s mind refocuses on his pedophilia: “You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!)” (14).

Humbert admits to his insanity and deprecates himself. Yet, Humbert also refers to himself as an artist, detracting from his admission of shame in lieu of self-commendation.

One moment, Humbert’s narrative justifies his lust, while the next moment grieves over the causes of his demented actions. This narrative contradiction illustrates the instability within Humbert and, subsequently, in the novel.

2.2 The monster removes his veil

Throughout the novel, Humbert addresses his pedophilia with conflicting feelings; consequently, his volatile narrative masks his evil and inherent need for control over women. At first, it may seem that Humbert feels sympathy for his victims: “A propos: I have often wondered what became of those nymphets later? In this wrought-iron world of criss-cross cause and effect, could it be that the hidden throb I stole from them did not affect their future? I had possessed her – and she never knew it. All right” (18). 37

Nevertheless, Humbert continues to seduce and even kidnap the ‘objects’ of his obsessions, going so far as to persuade the reader that they were active participants in their own demise. Yet Humbert seems sympathetic about causing harm to his victims. He contemplates if his actions affected them. Towards the end of his passage, Humbert believes that the girl was unaware of his control and, therefore, he did not affect her or cause her pain. His final words, “All right,” resound and cast off any guilt; this narrator suppresses the guilt in his unconscious (18). This interiority is conflicted and unstable, mimicking the war that wages in Humbert’s own mind as a result of his lust. However, a vast majority of his narrative indicates his psychological compulsion to manipulate and possess women, unraveling his shameful repentance and revealing the inner monster within this narrator. For instance, he directly expresses that he could attain “any adult female [he] chose” (22). To prove himself right, Humbert decides to marry Valeria to show that he can attract an adult female even though he feels nothing for her. While

Humbert does not love Valeria, he becomes enraged when he finds his wife with another man: “A mounting fury was suffocating me – not because I had any particular fondness for that figure of fun, Mme Humbert, but because matters of legal and illegal conjunction were for me alone to decide” (24). Humbert lacks control over his marriage’s fate and his wife. His fury sparks a fire because Valeria shows womanly independence outside of his influence and made the decision to leave him. Humbert views himself, as a man, as superior to women and feels anger when they escape his domination. He yearns for control and adult women prove to be outside of his realm of manipulation. As a result, he exposes a primary reason for why he victimizes young women - they are deemed easier to govern and oppress with their age and innocence. 38

As Humbert begins his story about Lolita (Dolores Haze) he describes his immediate infatuation with her and distaste for her mother, setting the stage for the cycle of abuse to continue for all involved and further solidifying his urge for control over women in his life. He instantly identifies Lolita, associating her persona with the ideal he lost with Annabel. Humbert positions himself in close proximity to her daily life, marrying the mother, Charlotte Haze, who he often refers to as that ‘Haze woman.’ After his marriage to Valeria, Humbert is weary of his ability to influence Charlotte, especially with the added fact of her brazen American womanhood: “I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regards to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland

American Charlotte frightened me” (77). Humbert considers Charlotte and is instantly alarmed; he might not be able to manage her ‘American,’ head-strong nature, but he believes that he is intelligent and capable of molding her to his will. In turn, Humbert depicts Charlotte as an unloving, jealous mother to sway the reader against her and validate his self-perceived superiority over her. Humbert succeeds in fooling Charlotte for quite some time, but she ultimately escapes his control. Once Charlotte recognizes

Humbert’s intentions towards her daughter, she calls him out for the villain that he is:

“You’re a monster. You’re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near –

I’ll scream out the window” (89). For the first time, a woman outrightly calls out

Humbert for his sinister behavior and attempts to derail his entire existence exposing him.

He fails to maintain authority over Charlotte and, therefore, she perishes so that he can keep his secret and pursue her daughter.

Humbert believes that Lolita was made for him and pulls her into his turbulent life and psychosis, using his past psychological pain to explain his obsession with the young 39 girl and justifying his gendered trauma. Lolita captivates Humbert at first sight. Instantly, he likens her to his Annabel and his libido takes hold of her, just as the trauma takes over his own identity. On further observation, Humbert postulates that Lolita may even eclipse

Annabel’s meaning within his mind, replace the lost ideal he has been searching for since her death: “my soul managed to suck in every detail of her bright beauty, and these I checked against the features of my dead bride. A little later, of course, she, this nouvelle, this Lolita, my Lolita, was to eclipse completely her prototype” (36). Humbert’s psyche ravages Lolita and reduces her to a thing, an object for his psyche to cling to and possess.

At first sight, Humbert realizes that Lolita could be the object-cathexis that his mind lost and contemplates that she may be the key to replacing his Annabel and his sorrow. Going forward, Humbert buries himself in Lolita’s life, clings and sordidly seeks out her youthful beauty, and navigates his way to kidnap her. After she learns of her mother’s death, Humbert finds her withdrawn and worries about his plan: “As she was in the act of getting back into the car, an expression of pain flitted across Lo’s face. It flitted again, more meaningfully, as she settled down beside me. […] Loquacious Lo was silent. Cold spiders of panic crawled down my back. This was an orphan. This was a lone child”

(131). Lolita, to Humbert, is always full of laughter and beauty yet, as she sinks into his car, he sees hurt flicker across her young face. The reader is unable to interpret Lolita’s thoughts outside of Humbert’s narrative; simultaneously, Humbert captures Lolita physically and mentally. Therefore, the reader must interpret Lolita’s facial expressions through Humbert’s filter. Humbert shows that he worries about Lolita’s pain and shivers shimmy down his spine as he contemplates what she could be thinking in this moment.

He knows that Lolita is alone, just like himself and just like he planned. Now, Lolita will 40 continue to be alone through his sustained abuse on their adventure across the United

States. Despite Lolita’s suffering, Humbert continues to manipulate every aspect of

Lolita’s life, including how she deals with grief over her mother, and further her mental scars from her sexual abuse.

Humbert seeks absolution for his sins through establishing Quilty as the villain of the tale. On one hand, Humbert is a combination of “picaro, sentimentalist, victim, marginal man, madman and artist;” in this text, Humbert plays various different roles

(Uphaus 104). On the other hand, Quilty acts as a “warning to Humbert’s mad life of excess” and reveals the possibilities of what is to come if Humbert continues to act in extravagance and immorality (Uphaus 106). Humbert enacts different roles to validate his actions throughout the novel and exercise his control over the reader’s perceptions of him. He introduces Quilty to lessen his own demons while Nabokov utilizes Quilty as a figural glimpse into Humbert’s potential future should he continue with a cycle of sexual abuse against, and control over, women. Despite Quilty’s symbolic depictions, Humbert regards Quilty as a vilified figure throughout the text to displace blame from himself. For example, Humbert tells the reader:

Unless it can be proven to me – to me as I am now, today, with my heart

and my beard, and my putrefaction – that, in the infinite run it does not

matter a jot that a North American girl child named Dolores Haze had been

deprived of her childhood by a maniac […] I see nothing for the treatment

of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art

(266) 41

Humbert concedes that Lolita’s childhood was a tragedy but does not reveal the identity of the “maniac” who ruined her life (266). Until this moment, Humbert focuses on keeping Lolita for himself, as an object to own, instead of a person to love and consider.

Despite his declarations of love, Humbert cannot disassociate Lolita from his object- cathexis. Humbert overcomes each moral objection and tarnishes Lolita’s purity. In spite of Humbert’s guilty conscience, he dictates that Quilty damages Lolita’s youth and virtue, failing to accept his responsibility for Lolita’s heartbreak. Humbert cannot escape his melancholy outside of the art of writing. He believes that art, his writing, will bring about catharsis and heal the past and numb his pain. After Quilty abducts Lolita,

Humbert, in turn, blames the kidnapper for taking advantage of her youth. Humbert stands in front of Quilty and reads off the allegations against him, his voice prosaic but disjointed: “Because you took advantage of a sinner / because you took advantage / because you took / because you took advantage of my disadvantage […] / because of all you did / because of all I did not / you have to die (282). In his own words, Humbert observes that he is a victim, just like Lolita. Quilty stole his prize and Humbert believes that he deserves his own justice. Humbert is at the brink of collapse because of his mental incapacities as shown through the lilting and fractured narrative structure of his poetry. His power over Lolita and his own life slips through his fingers, prompting a psychological break. The only thing left to control is language and the reader’s perception of him. Therefore, he clings to lyrical wordsmithing, which allows him to craft a diatribe against Quilty and all of the ways that he hurt Lolita, casting off all of his culpability by writing his sins and casting them onto another sinful villain. 42

Humbert, emmeshed in his poetry, murders his literary foil, relieving his distressed conscience and atoning for his abuses. But Quilty is guilty of the same pedophilic crime as Humbert, so how are Quilty’s crimes that abominable to Humbert?

Humbert’s unconscious regards Quilty as his double. By confronting Quilty, Humbert is finally able to challenge himself about what he has done to Lolita. Also, by killing Quilty,

Humbert murders the part of his suffering mind and find solace amidst his struggle with his identity, regaining control of his own fate. Yet Humbert does not find self-comfort after murdering Quilty. On the contrary, the narrative continues to retrospectively fixate on his wrong-doings and his mental torment because his identity is still broken. Humbert tells the audience that he deserves to be penalized for his misdeeds: “Had I come before myself, I would give Humbert at least thirty-five years for rape” (290). Humbert acts as his own judge and jury, giving himself his own sentence for his crimes. The narrator neglects to define his offenses and leaves the reader questioning whether he deserves jail time for Quilty’s murder or for Lolita’s abduction and rape. Because Humbert does identify his transgressions to the reader, he demonstrates that he cannot completely regard what he forced Lolita through and, therefore, fails to clear his conscience with

Quilty’s murder. This narrator escapes any real time in prison through self-therapy as he crafts his art, confessing his sins and negating them at the same time. His art does not grant him a true healing experience because this unreliable narrator cannot admit the truth of his actions or repent for his failures. Linda Kauffman reviews Humbert’s internal struggle through a feminist lens and asserts: “Aesthetic bliss is not a criterion that compensates for those crimes; instead it is a dead end, meager consolation of the murder of Lolita’s childhood” (163). Humbert’s memoir does not pay for his misdeeds and is not 43 a viable alternative for escaping his guilt. In fact, the diary provides paltry comfort to recompense for Lolita’s tragic story. The text does not encourage a positive outlook for any character and their inner traumas continue to eat them away from the inside out.

Humbert remains the same after he murders Quilty: expressing that his past triggered his present monstrosity, failing to fully realize the harm of his actions on his victims, and continuing to control the victims like chess pieces through the memoir’s conclusion.

Humbert, like Quilty, dies without fully addressing and compensating for their sins.

2.3 Unearth the devil, recover the girl

Many writers who emphasize melancholy in their works allow their characters to work through their mental injuries and experience catharsis by their conclusions; however, Nabokov’s Humbert fails to free himself from his fixations and his melancholia, despite this protagonist’s protestations. Leona Tucker declares that “Lolita produces a cathartic effect. It lulls us into long spans of sympathy for Humbert and then punishes us for our temporary suspension in judgment” (200). Nabokov’s novel reprimands the reader when they fall for Humbert’s rhetoric and feel sympathetic for him.

Tucker asserts that the liberating experience is when the audience is castigated so they can free their minds from Humbert’s narrative clutches. Humbert, himself, remains frozen in his chaotic mind. He writes this memoir about Lolita, showing that his compulsive hunger still affects his conscious: “I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive,” so that he would not besmirch her name or make her suffer any longer (290). Regardless, Humbert keeps Lolita captive in his mind and in his text, further subjecting her to his oppression and stealing her away for his own benefit.

Humbert does not allow Lolita freedom even after their deaths. Instead, her victimization 44 will forever be immortalized within the tombs of Humbert’s art. Additionally, Humbert then speaks directly to Lolita in the text, stating: “Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. […] That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve” (291). Humbert is still inserting himself into Lolita’s life without permission, controlling her with his self-perceived masculine dominance. He even threatens her husband, Dick, proclaiming that his ghost would rip him apart should any harm come to her. Humbert fails to recognize the pain he inflicted on Lolita and, in doing so, paints himself as an avenging angel who will stop at nothing to keep her safe. It seems that, despite the moral lesson, he still cannot overcome his obsession and is mentally corrupt. He concludes his passage to Lolita with these final lines: “the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I share, my Lolita”

(291). Humbert takes shelter in his art, his memoir, to preserve his memory and love for his Lolita. With the art, Humbert cannot release his melancholia and its repercussions on his mind. He attempts to cleanse his trauma by means of sanitariums, his prison stay, and even by writing this novel. However, despite awareness of his flaws and fixations,

Humbert remains a flagrant narrator and does not undergo any sort of catharsis throughout the entirety of this novel. Humbert fails to fully realize how he controls

Lolita, exposing her to continued abuse throughout the course of the novel and afterwards.

Nabokov, like Freud, attempts to expose the mechanics behind the human mind in his novel. Critic John Ingham states that this work is based on “Freud’s paper on the rescue fantasy” (Ingham 28). For instance, a number of critics follow Humbert as he 45

“tries to protect Lolita from Quilty, and he fathers a ‘child’ with Lolita in the form of a memoir, a text that transforms Lolita and himself into an immortal work of art” (Ingham

29). Many writers believe that Nabokov solely attempts to parody out Freudian thought and set a demented Humbert up as carrying out the “parental art of procreation” (Ingham

29). However, considering this work as exclusively a mockery would discount any of the psychological development that Nabokov analyzes throughout this work. Humbert’s traumatic past invades his identity and the work’s narrative, highlighting the cause and effect of mental anguish on the conscious. As a child, Humbert experiences loss of parental figures and an ideal of love. Seemingly unable to reconcile with his past, a young Humbert turns inward into his unconscious and his libido fully takes hold of his ego. His libido, with a mental state grief-stricken over the lost love, spurs his fascination with young girls. As Humbert’s obsession with women-children grows, his mental state decays and he is incontrovertibly changed. Humbert’s identity solely exists to satiate his fixations, which, in turn, completely fragments his original identity. Nabokov indicates that Humbert’s demented mental state correlates to the language used throughout the novel. In the memoir, Humbert is mostly clear and concise. However, as Humbert negotiates with his conscience, attempts to conceal his wrong doings, or explains away his abuses, his language becomes prosaic and elaborate; in fact, the author, Humbert, reveals his inner madness as he uses artful literary devices and lofty rhetoric. This chapter is not intended to relieve Humbert of any guilt; on the contrary, it is an attempt to understand the madman behind Nabokov’s pen and the ways he uses language as a means of hiding Lolita’s truths from the reader, displacing his guilty conscience, and continuing his abusive behaviors. By understanding the monster, the reader can gleam more insight 46 into how he manipulates the reader with his psychoanalysis self-interpretations and vies for control of Lolita’s voice and body throughout the text. In the next chapter, I will discuss the effects of gendered trauma by analyzing Lolita’s experiences throughout the memoir.

Chapter 3: A Trauma to Remember: Lolita, Sally Horner,

and the Realities of Sexual Abuse

While psychoanalysis provides Humbert with an escape from his crimes and guilt, trauma theory exposes Humbert as the perpetrator and reveals Lolita as both a victim and a survivor of sexual abuse. Throughout his memoir, Humbert attempts to seduce the reader and cultivate their compassion as he describes his sordid ‘love affair’ with the young Lolita. With prosaic language, Humbert composes an account describing the events that trigger his pedophilia and present him as a sympathetic narrator. His text encourages the reader to discount his heinous crimes, as well as to displace any subsequent blame, obscuring his criminalities with psychoanalysis. Yet, he fails to fully conceal Lolita’s insurmountable suffering and the abuse she endures from the reader.

Lolita’s systematic abuse begins when Humbert dismantles her home, infiltrating her family as a newfound ‘father figure’ and playing a significant role in her mother’s untimely death. Humbert deprives her of her youth to satiate his sadistic sexual fixations, confiscates her self-hood by usurping her name and stealing her voice, alters the course of her life which inexplicably prompts her death, and, as his final act, forever entombs her within a literary coffin stained by the memories of her childhood torment. By analyzing this work through a trauma theory lens, Lolita’s muted identity returns to the forefront of the literary conversation, despite Humbert’s attempt to textually dominate her. Judith Herman defines a traumatic event as one that “overwhelm[s] the ordinary human adaptions to life,” which “Unlike commonplace misfortunes […] traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence and death” (Herman 33). Trauma theory facilitates comprehension of how 48

Humbert’s actions impact Lolita, thereby uncovering the ways in which Lolita suffers, as a casualty of abuse, in a modern society. Throughout this novel, with Herman’s definition in mind, Humbert violates Lolita’s body and voice, traumatizing her to the core of her identity. According to scientific studies, children who suffer sexual abuse are subject to

“dysthymic symptoms,” which is related to persistent depressive state, and experience

“psychological, emotional, and social consequences” as they grow into adulthood

(Horwitz 195, Larsen 436). As a result of Humbert’s prolonged sexual abuse, Lolita is subject to an array of subsequent life altering consequences. Furthermore, Humbert stalks and assaults Lolita because he views her as a youthful, feminine object, or a plaything for his pleasurable amusements. Many critics believe that Nabokov’s novel references the actual abduction of Sally Horner. Although Nabokov never verified the origins of his tale, pairing the novel with a true kidnapping reveals the stark reality of male domination while subverting Humbert’s power as the creator of Lolita. In the text, Humbert advises the reader that Lolita exercises control over him and entices him. On the contrary, Lolita is powerless in the face of Humbert’s male gaze and domination, invisible beyond the confines of Humbert’s distorted recollections. In this chapter, I contend that Nabokov’s

Lolita covertly explores the space where feminism and trauma intersect, creating a text that subverts masculine hegemony by exposing Lolita's abuse through the fissures of

Humbert's narrative.

3.1 The Sally Horner connection

Nabokov seemingly constructs his novel around Sally Horner’s abduction; by setting Sally’s kidnapping as the foundation for his work, Nabokov comments on the reality of toxic masculinity and its effects on women. In 1948, Frank La Salle stole 49 eleven-year-old Sally in Camden, New Jersey. Sally took a notebook from a store “to impress some popular girls” but Frank stopped her and made her follow him, claiming that he was with the FBI (Waldman 2018). Frank journeyed across the United States with

Sally to settle in California. When Sally told her neighbor about her Frank, she “endured twenty-one months of rape and abuse” (Waldman 2018). Sally died in a car crash in

1952, only two years after she was rescued from Frank. Like Sally, Lolita falls prey to an older man’s malintent and faces sexual abuse at the hands of her abductor. Lolita also encounters a tragic end after finding freedom from their abuser. On the surface, Sally’s life and Lolita’s tale match almost perfectly, signifying that Nabokov drew inspiration from Sally’s capture. At the time of the work’s release, critics lambasted Nabokov “for draping entrancing sentences over the ugliness of sexual abuse” and “obscures the truth of Sally’s pain and trauma, and thereby is a betrayal of Sally and all the victims of sexual abuse” (Waldman 2018). Some critics regard Nabokov with judgement, stating that he exalts pedophilia and entraps Sally in a continuous cycle of violence. Yet, the reader must remember that Nabokov’s narrator pens this novel to recount his fixation with his young

‘love.’ The reader should not fall into the narrator’s sympathy snare or else they shall become “moral mincemeat” along with the diarist (Waldman 2018). Instead, Nabokov provides the reader with the ugly truths of a pedophile’s mind, exposing their sadism and the victim’s truths. The novel pays tribute to the Lolita and not to the pedophilic memoirist. As a result, the narrative creates a tension between masculine dominion over women and the ensuing trauma. It is important to preserve Sally’s story while reading

Lolita in order to address the similarities of their abuses and to examine the prominence of child sexual abuse, as well as its consequences. 50

As Humbert describes his fixation with Lolita to his reader, he uses his masculine gaze, as well as his power as a writer, to overpower her and denies her individual existence outside of her sexuality; in doing so, Humbert grooms Lolita into his silent prey. Frank La Salle found a lone child and used a false position of authority to capture her. Similarly, Humbert identifies vulnerable, young girls as his ‘perfect victims’ and exploits their helplessness. Humbert pinpoints fatherless, affectionate-starved children as his ideal target, allowing him to disguise his pedophilia with paternal affection. As a narcissist sex offender, Humbert also uses affection to control the young girls and turns the shame onto them once he ensnares them in his wicked trap. Humbert uses language and style to persuade the reader, as well as the children themselves, that they are to blame for his demented appetite:

Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine

and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice

or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human,

but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to

designate as ‘nymphets.’ (14)

He asserts that the girls enrapture him with their otherworldly powers. His romantic, magical word-choices hypersexualize the girls and transforms them into seductresses, leaving himself as the ‘innocent’ casualty of their will. Humbert’s rhetoric also contributes to the tone of masculine oppression throughout the novel. To Humbert, women are not equal to men but, by fashioning these girls into subhuman creatures, he denigrates their existence and casts them further outside of the fixed gender binary power dynamic. In a patriarchal society, lineage stems from the father and explains the child’s 51 ancestry; consequently, a woman’s sensuality can trigger male anxiety about their legacy

(Gubar 3). Therefore, society envelopes women into categories of ‘angel’ or

‘madwoman’ to reinforce order and masculine control over their own history; similarly, literature recapitulates this notion and also designates women as objects “exist[ing] only to be acted on by men” (Gubar 4). Likewise, Patnoe believes that Lolita aligns with a conversation that condemns feminine sexuality and reinforces masculine violence against women. Lolita’s story expands upon an existing discourse that justifies male sexuality and castigates female sexuality (Patnoe 84). By sexualizing Lolita, Humbert shifts blame from himself onto Lolita. Lolita’s perceived female ‘sexuality’ provides a way for

Humbert to justify his sexual abuse and what happens to Lolita. Yet Humbert fails to account for the actual children underneath his painting. His male gaze seeks the children out and perpetrates masculine violence against them. Likewise, Humbert references

Lolita as the sexual instigator, blaming her for his perversions: “[…] it was she who seduced me” (124). From one perspective, the dominant one, the narrative tells a story of a brazen, flirty girl who tempts Humbert. From another perspective, the marginal one,

Humbert sets his sights on Lolita as soon as he enters the Haze household – his gaze a panopticon to keep her under his thumb. He even weasels his way into becoming Lolita’s stepfather and holds stock in her mother’s death, all so that he can steal Lolita away for his own his personal gain despite any tragic consequences for the young Haze.

Humbert’s distorted portrait of Lolita detracts from her image and identity; as a result, Humbert becomes Lolita’s author as well as her eliminator. Humbert hides the true

Lolita and only reveals her to the audience when she can be useful within the text. First, the memoirist drugs Lolita to keep her physically inert and emotionally muted: 52

“Tomorrow I would stuff her with those earlier pills that had so thoroughly numbed her mummy” (121). Humbert plies Lolita with medication to keep her compliant and to dull her responses to his advances. Like her mother, Lolita is more useful to him as a doll and not as a full-bodied, fully present person, susceptible to only his wants and needs.

Humbert disparages Lolita further by literarily transforming himself into her god-like creator: “In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child” (7). He explains that his sexually unfulfilled relationship with his childhood love, Annabel, prompted Lolita’s existence in the world. He proclaims that his loss triggers his pedophilic predilections towards Lolita. On the surface,

Humbert’s argument may seem like a plausible, scientific formulation of his base fixations. However, Humbert envisions Lolita as his own creation and objectifies her youthful girlhood by pinpointing himself as her maker; to this diarist, she does not exist beyond his narration and experience which impairs her ability to fashion a self outside of his control. Humbert does not gain enough power by taking on a ‘father’ role and assumes ultimate authority as her God. Additionally, Humbert’s memoir is devoid of

Lolita’s thoughts or feelings, or even reliable depictions of her actions; throughout this tale, Humbert filters Lolita’s words and activities through his own interpretations, leaving the reader uncertain of whether or not he provides a clear and accurate portrayal of her.

Lolita’s chronic immobility represents another way in which Humbert attempts to own and influence her character throughout the memoir. Humbert’s narrative creates a problem, however, if the reader fails to interpret the ways in which the narrator suppresses his victim’s voice and identity. For instance, Rachel Carroll states that, “the unreliability of Humbert’s narrative voice many have remained complicit in his 53 construction of Lolita in the image of his own” and many critics like Carroll agree that

Humbert’s narrative speaks to the need for feminist movements against the sexual abuse against girls (70). The reader colludes with Humbert in Lolita’s abuse should they fail to see through his attempt to censor her self-hood and steal her youth. If the reader fails to consider Lolita’s suffering, they fail to see the importance of the dialogue concerning the abuse of girls.

It is imperative to comprehend how Humbert’s sexual perversions strip Lolita of her childhood through his dialogue concerning her adolescent abuses; he reduces Lolita to a sexualized object without thought to the negative impact his actions would, and will, have on her developing psyche. Humbert’s sole goal is to ensnare Lolita and groom her into his own liking. In his plot to capture Lolita, Humbert first conspires to steal her away from her family. Humbert invades Lolita’s life through his ‘love affair’ with her mother,

Charlotte. His narrative is distinctly critical of Charlotte and casts her into a negative light. Julian Connolly states that, “From his point of view, Charlotte primarily serves as an obstacle between him and the object of his desire, Dolly Haze. […] He consistently lampoons her with terms such as ‘bland Mrs. Haze, ‘phocine mama,’ ‘fat Haze,’ ‘the old cat,’ the obnoxious lady,’ and ‘the big cold Haze” (Connolly 82). Humbert’s verbal lashings tell the reader how to feel about Charlotte and leaves them with feelings of distaste for her. Humbert continually throws insults at Charlotte in his memoir in order to provide credence for Lolita’s abduction; in his mind, Charlotte represents the impediment between Lolita and himself. Humbert doubles-down on his invectives by pitting Charlotte and daughter against one another and in a warfare enflamed by jealousy. Humbert depicts

Charlotte “as jealous rival of [her] own daughter and incestuous triangle arise[s]” 54

(Masing-Delic 181). Through portraying Charlotte as a competitor for Humbert’s affections, he shapes her into an uncaring, selfish, and sexually deviant mother figure who is unfit to parent Lolita. Humbert wants the reader to find reason within his quest to steal Lolita from her mother. Subsequently, when Charlotte uncovers Humbert’s scheming thoughts about her daughter, she confronts him and ends up losing her life.

Humbert’s actions kill Charlotte and deprive Lolita of the only parent she has left in her life. Most importantly, Humbert removes the only feminine influence in Lolita’s life, disconnecting her from a female community and subsequently traumatizing her childhood development. Without her mother, Lolita is ripped away from her support system, from her maternal protector. Humbert violently tears Lolita from her own lineage and replaces it with himself as her patriarchal master; therefore, Humbert becomes Lolita’s sole creator, provider, and caretaker.

Without reserve, Humbert then steals Lolita’s given name, denying her a selfhood outside of his command. The novel’s title, Humbert’s opening lines, and the entirety of the novel emphasize the importance of ‘Lolita.’ Yet, Lolita’s birth name is Dolores and everyone in her life calls her by its variations except Humbert: “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita” (7).

Our narrator chooses this name for an array of reasons and many critics examine how he calls her “Lolita, while everyone else calls her by the name she prefers, Dolly” (Patnoe

98). First, Humbert inspires a connection with her by bestowing her with a special pet name and demonstrates his power over her by naming her as an architect titles their designs. He also metamorphoses her into what he imagines as an adult, ethereal siren. 55

Unlike Dolores, Lolita would be a romantic, striking name in the American 1940s.

Humbert believes that this new name will transpose Lolita into potent seductress and justify her eventual rape to the reader; for this reason, her new name objectifies her based on his artificial manifestation of her sexuality. Irene Masing-Delic accedes and postulates that the narrative’s focus on the false name veils Humbert’s devious intentions and

Lolita’s suffering at his hands: “Lolita is in its entirety focused on the sexual exploitation of a child, the fey-like Lolita whose ‘lolly-pop’ name – so erotically and ‘phonetically- linguistically’ savored by Humbert in the famous opening of the novel – is a sugar- coating over her real name: Dolores. This name reveals the true reality of her, as well as her tormentor’s torments” (181). Lolita is Dolores’s magical name that enhances the realities of her mistreatment and Humbert’s lust for young women. The sickening-sweet name becomes a reflection of her sexualized personality given to her by Humbert and transforms her into a mystical creature. Her rechristening significantly suppresses her original self from the reader. While Humbert chooses the Spanish name for Dolores for nefarious purposes, Nabokov indulges in word play to covertly reveal the memoirist’s plot and Lolita’s to the reader. Lolita is the Spanish diminutive of Dolores, which translates to ‘pains’ or ‘suffering’ (O’Neill 2008). Then, in Catholicism, the Virgin Mary is famously coined Our Lady of Sorrows, or Nuestra Señora de los Dolores in Spanish, due to the seven griefs she experiences in her lifetime including the rise and fall of Jesus

Christ and is commonly depicted with seven swords spearing her torso (Awalt 26).

Nabokov not only emphasizes that Lolita’s name reflects her own anguish but likens her to the Virgin Mary too. In the New Testament, Mary is a perpetual virgin and the ideal

Christian woman. Like Mary, Lolita is an innocent woman who encounters immense 56 agony at the hands of man. Nabokov contradicts Humbert’s defamation of Lolita by aligning her with the Virgin Mary. Despite Nabokov’s inferences, however, Lolita’s “life, fate, and image continue to be supplanted” by Humbert over the course of his memoir because he uses her name as a means of control (Patnoe 98). He even goes as far as to name his memoir Lolita in her honor even though his memoir continually silences her throughout its pages.

Humbert completes his grooming process as he forces Lolita into a submissive state via physical, emotional, and literary manipulation; in these ways, this diarist seizes total ownership of her body, mind, and perception. He steals her name and identity, kills off her mother, repeatedly plies her with drugs, abducts her for a cross-country journey to

California, and rapes her to fulfill his sadistic cravings. Yet Humbert pleads with the reader that his actions are beyond his control and, despite his cries for salvation, he categorically admits to his violence against Lolita as he lapses into his extravagant musings. For instance, Humbert inadvertently illustrates Lolita’s maltreatment and his power over her when he describes himself as a “a radiant and robust Turk” and Lolita as

“the youngest and frailest of his slaves” (60). This imagery reveals Humbert as a powerful conqueror and Lolita as his feeble prisoner. Overall, Humbert delineates Lolita as an aggressor and seducer, but he simultaneously paints Lolita as a slave, revealing the truth about her abduction; by enslaving Lolita, he restricts her autonomy and undermines her identity. Humbert fully establishes Lolita as the ‘other’ when he paints her as a slave; in his text, he objectifies her for her sexual worth, suppresses any chances for her to tell her own story, and suffocates her voice. He claims that he loves Lolita, but he only values her for her subjugation and the commodities she represents for him. Humbert, more 57 accurately, enjoys control. Humbert must defeat his any obstacles standing in his way of his treasures and his ownership of it. He enjoys dominating Lolita and advertises his pleasure to the reader: “In the middle of the night she came sobbing into [my room], and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go” (142).

Humbert pairs his literary imagery of Lolita’s enslavement with actual depictions of her captivity. Lolita, still a child, must rely on her captor for everything. When Lolita cries, he takes satisfaction in how he possesses her and how she has nowhere else to go. He took away everything from her, leaving her no choice but to succumb to his will; by stripping Lolita from her previous life, Humbert gains complete supremacy over Lolita and he revels in his power.

3.2 Lolita’s ceaseless cycle of trauma

Humbert believes that he fools the world with his father-like façade but other characters notice Lolita’s imprisonment, which reveals Humbert’s evil nature and

Lolita’s traumas. This memoirist considers himself a genius and a master of fooling everyone around him. Throughout the novel, Humbert arrogantly boasts his cunning ways: “I felt proud of myself. I had stolen the honey of a spasm without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done” (57). Humbert pleasures himself without

Lolita, or anyone, catching onto him. He imagines that he is a brilliant, covert pervert, incapable of being caught by the outside world. Yet when others cast their gaze on

Humbert, they make him uncomfortable and inadvertently cause him to disclose his deep- seated fears of being exposed for his crimes. For instance, Humbert feels that Mrs.

Chatfield likens him to a high-profile predator: “It was Mrs. Chatfield. She attached me with a fake smile, all aglow with evil curiosity. (Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what 58

Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in

1948)?” (272). As Humbert narrates Mrs. Chatfield’s inner assessments, he unwittingly compares himself to the infamous Frank Lasalle. Nabokov confirmed that Lolita includes references to real pedophile cases but, because Humbert explicitly names Frank in his narrative, he implicitly makes a parallel association between the two pedophiles

(Waldman 2018). Frank and Humbert are both con men who use lies and masculine authority to entrap and torment their young victims. By linking himself with a notorious offender, Humbert confesses to the extent of his crimes and renders his sins more tangible to the reader; any reader who is familiar with Frank can comprehend the disastrous, real-life consequences for Sally Horner and the dangers that Humbert presents to Lolita and other women. Moreover, Clare Quilty also sees through Humbert’s pretense. Quilty is an unrestrained, unrepentant pedophile and fully regards Humbert as a kindred man: "We are men of the world, in everything—sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends […] but really, my dear Mr.

Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather" (283). Unlike Humbert, Quilty is candid about his desires and his vicious behavior. However, as Quilty points out, these men are more similar than not, and Humbert is not as innocent as he wants the outside world to believe. Quilty outrightly points out that Humbert is not the model father figure to Lolita and that he is a lustful fiend - just like him. As a result, Quilty’s narration nudges the reader into consciousness and allows them to open their eyes to the true Humbert’s pedophilic monstrousness.

Despite Humbert’s attempt to mute Lolita, her dialogue reveals that she is more aware of her imprisonment than he thinks her to be throughout the novel. Lolita’s voice 59 silently prods through the narrative, demonstrating her acknowledgment of the undulating torture Humbert subjects her to over the course of her childhood. For example, Lolita seemingly jests with Humbert about their captor/victim relationship: “’The word is incest," said Lo—and walked into the closet, walked out again with a young golden giggle” (112). Lolita calls Humbert out for his incestuous actions towards her. Though

Humbert concludes his conversation with her chuckle, Lolita’s emphasis on her rape sharpens the fact that Lolita is conscious of his sexual advances and may not be as comfortable with them as Humbert leads on. She is not naïve and is highly cognizant of the situation Humbert places her in, despite her inability to escape him. The memoir’s dialogue further captures Lolita’s abuse through Humbert’s eyes as he contemplates, in a moment of atypical remorse, how his actions affect Lolita; for instance, Humbert ponders, “This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul- smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning” (131). The narrative’s imagery provides a grotesque picture of Humbert’s sexual abuse to the reader, allowing for a rare glimpse into the very real and abominable ways in which he tortures

Lolita on their trip across the United States after her abduction. Humbert depicts Lolita as a solitary child and himself as a lustful adult man, prompting the reader to feel grief for her circumstances. Her genuine portrait underlines her true suffering, contradicting

Humbert’s earlier portrayals of this young girl. Humbert counters his honest descriptions of Lolita with disingenuous, mythical portraits of his ‘love affair.’ Yet Humbert still confesses that Lolita does not travel with him willingly: “Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise—a paradise 60 whose skies were the color of hell flames—but still a paradise” (155). On one hand,

Humbert likens himself to Milton’s depiction of the fallen angel, Lucifer, as he is cast out of paradise as an epic hero. On the other hand, Lolita scratches and tears at Humbert’s imaginings, elucidating the reality of her capture and the terror she faces because of her kidnapping; Humbert fashions them into a romantic paradise, while Lolita silently begs for her freedom in the backdrop of his idyllic language.

As a direct result of Humbert’s victimization, Lolita lives in relative squalor; her

‘adult’ circumstances correlate to the traumas of her sexual abuse. The Adverse

Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study explains that there is a strong relationship between high ACEs scores and “mental problems, such as depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders,” as well as “physical health problems such as […] a shortened lifespan”

(Maryland Coalition of Families). Humbert subjected Lolita to an array of cruelties in her youth, leaving her at high risk for acquiring bodily and emotional issues in her adulthood.

Humbert stole Lolita’s life when he imposed his body and mind on her. For example, after Lolita runs away from Humbert and subsequently leaves Quilty, she settles in a dilapidated town, marries Dick Schiller, and becomes pregnant at seventeen years old.

Lolita writes to Humbert because she needs money to move to Alaska. When Humbert arrives at her house, he uses bleak, sullied imagery to set the scene: “Hunter Road was

[…] in an even more dismal district, all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden, and shack, and gray drizzle, and red mud, and several smoking stacks in the distance. I stopped at the last ‘house’ – a clapboard shack, with […] a waste of withered weeds all around” (252). Lolita resides in a run-down part of town, overrun by ramshackle nature and man-made structures. Humbert forces Lolita into a life she never chose because she 61 was left without familial support, an education, or even an identity of her own. Lolita makeshifts her life for a semblance of normalcy, rebelling against her past suffering to create a life of her own. Lolita never lives a full, healthy existence because of her childhood mistreatment. Lolita undergoes more than ongoing physical torment; because of her past distress, her mind suffers as well. For instance, she refuses to speak about her time with him with any emotion: “She asked me not to be dense. The past was the past. I had been a good father, she guessed – granting me that” (256). Lolita declines to talk to

Humbert about their relationship because of the pain it brings her to relive it, especially given his proximity. She only refers to Humbert as her dad and nothing more, repressing the memories she buried in her conscious when she escaped him. Theorist, Susan

Suleiman states that, “When attacked in this way, the brain is not able to fully assimilate or ‘process the event, and responds through various mechanisms such as psychological numbing, or shutting down of normal emotional responses” (Suleiman 276). Lolita is fully aware of the trauma she faced as a child and is dull to the pain of her past. Lolita buries her pain to the furthest recesses of her mind to handle the onslaught of emotions caused by her abduction and rape. Throughout the novel, the reader can expose

Humbert’s masculine suppression and uncover the real Lolita by analyzing her responses to situations, or even Humbert’s recollections of events.

When Humbert visits Lolita, she seems content with her life and to have put her traumas behind her; yet, after time with Humbert, Lolita seems too eerily calm about facing her captor and rapist, offering subliminal signs that she is not as comfortable with her situation, or Humbert, as she first appears. Lolita invites Humbert into her house and the narrative paints her with vivid imagery: 62

‘Come in,’ she said with a vehement cheerful note. Against the splintery

deadwood of the door, Dolly Schiller flattened herself as best she could

(even rising on tiptoe a little) to let me pass, and was crucified for a moment,

looking down, smiling down at the threshold, hollow-cheeked with round

pommettes, her watered-milk white arms outspread on the wood. I passed

without touching her bulging babe. Dolly-smell with a faint fried addition.

(254)

Lolita seemingly welcomes Humbert into her house with a happiness and high cheeks, but she vigorously invites him into her home while avoiding his touch. Lolita’s body language shows that she is not comfortable with Humbert’s closeness. According to trauma theory, childhood abuse memories never fade: “Memories of trauma, he claims, cannot be dissociated or repressed – on the contrary, the more violent the trauma, the more subjects are likely to remember it, indeed to never forget it even if they want to”

(Suleiman 279). Lolita presents post traumatic stressors to seeing Humbert again, with how her body avoids direct eye and body contact, as if she is trying to disappear. Lolita attempts to quash Humbert from her mind and, as such, the suffering of her childhood.

However, Lolita is unable to deny his presence as they continue their conversation in the house about her life after his abuse. Moreover, the narration is lined by Christian imagery. Lolita appears as a Christ-like figure, her arms tightly bound to the wood of the door and her mind is wrought in agony. This literary technique turns her stress-induced actions into a way for Humbert to turn the situation in his favor. Humbert depicts Lolita as a Christ-like figure to show her sacrifice for his sins; in this chapter, Lolita lets

Humbert in her house, and, in his mind, she sacrifices herself for him. If Lolita martyrs 63 herself despite his heinous behavior, he can finally be absolved for his sins. Again,

Humbert turns Lolita’s pain into his own self-gain, distracting the reader from Lolita remembering her past anguish. Humbert uses his masculine voice and power to diminish

Lolita’s importance and pain.

Despite Lolita’s subtle gestures, she remains kind to Humbert and pushes down her trauma to survive their final encounter. For example, Humbert asks about Lolita’s life after she was taken from him and she replies with calm indifference even though her first abuser sits next to her. Before Humbert’s departure, he asks Lolita to join him, to leave with him. Lolita reaches to touch him, as if in sympathy: “’I’ll die if you touch me,’ I said,’ ‘You are sure that you are not coming with me? Is there no hope of your coming?

Tell me only this.’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, honey, no.’ She never called me honey before”

(262). Humbert still believes that what they shared is love and he aches for Lolita to go with him. She responds by calling him “honey” and denies him with fervor (262). Lolita uses a diminutive term of endearment to convey an effect of disbelief and pity which, in turn, gives Lolita a power in language she never wielded before. With her short, powerful words, Lolita shows Humbert that she can and will try to move on from his abuses. It is foolish for Humbert to think that Lolita would journey off with him like ‘the old times’ and, even though he believes that his actions did not affect Lolita because she was able to respond so calmly. Similarly, Lolita expresses the same cool, disinterest when she walks with Humbert to his old car. Humbert observes Lolita and analyzes her to determine if any traces the car impacts her outward appearance: “She and the dog saw me off. I was surprised (this a rhetorical figure, I was not) that the sight of the old car in which she had ridden as a child and a nymphet, left her so very indifferent. All she remarked was that it 64 was getting sort of purplish around the gills” (263). Unsurprised, Humbert claims that

Lolita seemed apathetic to seeing the prison of her youth. Unlike their conversation in the house, Humbert glosses over Lolita’s appearance as she looks at the car and fails to describe any sort of physical reaction to the car outside of that it was getting old.

Humbert knowingly decides to dismiss Lolita’s response to the vehicle because of what it represents to her. Like Frank Lasalle, Humbert ensnared Lolita in his car and forced her to ride face-to-face with her monstrous captor across the country. The old car represents all her childhood suffering and he would not be able to explain away her bodily feedback to an inanimate object like he would be able to with his own person. Therefore, Humbert baits the reader to believe that he has not caused Lolita undue suffering with his abduction and rape. However, Humbert fails to realize that his physical presence alone controls Lolita’s reactionary distress and that she contained her emotions since he walked through her door.

3.3 Death provides escapism for trauma

Death provides Lolita with a means to finally escape Humbert’s abuses.

Throughout the memoir, Lolita suffers from Humbert’s kidnapping and sexual assault.

The reader can uncover Lolita’s torment by dissecting Humbert’s actions and words, and especially by paying attention to the consequences both impart on her. At an early age,

Lolita seems to consider dying and what it means. She contemplates that passing is lonely in a ostensibly casual conversation with a friend: “’You know what’s so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own’; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know anything about my darling’s mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, 65 and a palace gate” (267). For the first time, Humbert realizes that she has a personality and selfhood outside of her perceived sexuality but what is more notable is that a child is considering what their own demise means to her. Lolita believes that the worst part of a life’s end is being alone, and this strikes her because she feels a similar feeling because of her abduction and imprisonment. However, her death provides her with freedom from

Humbert and her unpleasant memories of him. For example, Humbert concludes his novel with an ode to Lolita:

And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one

wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple months longer, so as to have him make

you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and

angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art.

Ant this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. (291)

Humbert asserts that he survives after Quilty so that he can tell Lolita’s story. He seemingly places Lolita’s tale above his own even though Lolita’s voice is relatively nonexistent outside of his own allowances. He claims that he intends to immortalize

Lolita in his art, ensconcing her body forever, even after their deaths, within a tale set to his own framework. His memoir will become an ode to his lost love. Yet this Lolita’s tale is not his to tell and he also fails to present any genuine depiction of her in his work.

While Humbert attempts to entomb himself with Lolita, she dies without knowing about the diary, without knowing that her story, however partial, will be forever inscribed in

Lolita.

Yet, Lolita’s death allows her a certain amount of autonomy, as her body and mind are now free from Humbert’s manipulation. This liberatory moment opens a space 66 within the text for the reader to access Lolita’s lived traumatic experiences despite her forced silence. Throughout his memoir, Humbert depicts his ‘love affair’ with the young

Dolores Haze. Humbert attempts to use psychology and language in order to describe the events that trigger his pedophilia and presents him as a sympathetic narrator. However,

Humbert masks his criminalities and attempts to silence his victim, Lolita, over the course of the text. He demolishes Lolita’s household, intrudes into her family and unwittingly triggers her mother’s death. Also, Humbert deprives Lolita of her youth to fulfill his sadistic sexual fixations, which take her name and voice, as her life is perpetually upended within his memoir. Feminists claim that psychoanalysis affixes women into a fixed identity and fails to account for women’s mental freedom from male subjectivity. Psychoanalytic feminists suggest that men subjugate women because of their alleged inferiority and compulsive urges located deep within the male unconscious. As a result of masculine violence and gendered trauma, women experience insurmountable mental anguish. In this novel, Humbert stalks and assaults Lolita because he views her as a youthful, feminine object, or a plaything for his pleasurable amusements; throughout

Humbert’s recollections, he demeans Lolita and entraps her within his physical and narrative space. Essentially, Lolita becomes a prisoner to be controlled. In the text,

Humbert advises the reader that Lolita holds power over him and entices him. However,

Lolita is powerless to Humbert’s male gaze and domination. Lolita does not exist outside of Humbert’s recollections and he contorts her voice to help support his deviant behavior.

Works like Lolita create a new perspective for the reader and create a discourse about the effects of masculinity on women and trauma on childhood trauma survivors.

The reader can learn about “how to go on living, to survive pain, absence, and trauma. 67

They give us the courage to make sense of a chaotic and violent world even by finding beauty in it” (Rabate vii). It is important to unearth trauma in texts, to demonstrate the importance of surviving despite the forces that seek to spark violence and pain. Lolita is a painful novel for its depiction of violence against women, yet it is a necessary work to discuss the violent, evil realities of sexual abuse that targets females because of their perceived ‘weakness.’ In my final chapter, I discuss psychoanalytic feminism and how this theory applies to the novel. Sequentially, I will explain why it is necessary to find

Lolita within the text and uncover her trauma; in doing so, Humbert can be eradicated from the text along with his violent actions. I will also uncover why it is even more necessary ‘re-understand’ Lolita in order to reject the destructive gendered discourse of sexual abuse.

Chapter 4: Run Lolita Run: A Subversion of Masculine Hegemony

and Lolita’s Feminist Resurrection

Psychoanalysis conceals Humbert’s evil, while trauma theory exposes his atrocities and Lolita’s subsequent victimhood; in their own way, both lenses uncover distinct, valuable analyses of the characters in Nabokov’s Lolita. Yet psychoanalytic feminism provokes a necessitous discussion regarding Lolita’s treatment as a young woman in this controversial work. Feminists allege that Freud’s theories are “prime perpetrators of patriarchy” because they fail to account for female psychosexual development or for the oppression that women encounter as a result of men’s inherent need to dominate them (Gallop 314). Consequently, feminist writers attempt to confront phallogocentric approaches embedded in psychoanalysis and depose gendered power structures within society in their works. For instance, Freud treated eighteen-year-old

Dora, who suffered severe depression stemming from sexual abuse by a family friend,

Herr K (Brown 628). Freud denied that any mistreatment occurred and, instead, believed that Dora fantasized about Herr K because of her latent desire for him, which induced

‘hysteric’ symptoms because she repressed her carnal yearnings (Brown 628). Dora’s case portrays her subjugation by Herr K, as well as by her famous psychotherapist because of the “authoritarian mode of interpretation and therapy practiced by Freud”

(Evans 65). Hélène Cixous reimagines Dora’s case to lambast Freudian theory and craft a feminist narrative from Dora’s perspective in her play, Portrait of Dora. In this work,

Cixous writes a call to arms, creating a protagonist that overthrows the destructive effects of male dominance and urges women to rewrite their stories, to take back their narratives, identities, and freedom. Throughout his memoir, Humbert constructs Lolita and her 69 mistreatment from his own recollections, skillfully navigating through a maze of biased memories to purposely veil Lolita beneath his own elucidations, while concomitantly isolating the reader from her thoughts and the reality of her captivity. However, the reader can recover Lolita’s silent, subjugated voice and subvert the dominant discourse of the text by framing Lolita alongside Cixous’s works and unearthing Lolita within her predator’s narrative. Moreover, as I demonstrate, a psychoanalytic feminist reading propels this novel into a contemporary discussion concerning the abuse of women within the context of the MeToo movement.

4.1 Psychoanalytic feminism brings meaning to the text

With a psychoanalytic feminist reading of texts, female characters can undermine the patriarchy and fully cope with, and overcome, their misery. For example, a family friend, Herr K, sexually assaulted Dora during her childhood and, upon finding a suicide note, her father sent her to be treated by Freud (Brown 628). During treatment, Freud concluded that Dora’s ‘hysterical’ symptoms erupted as a consequent result of her latent desire for Herr K and failure to prescribe to the feminine function within the Oedipus complex; as a result, Dora terminated her treatment after eleven weeks (Brown 628).

Freud subsequently criticized Dora for his failure because she ended her therapy early, but Freud’s misogynistic analysis propagates male violence against women, as well as entraps the female experience within patriarchal bias (Brown 628). Cixous reconceptualizes this case study through a feminist lens in Portrait of Dora to disempower the phallocratic narrative that Freud constructed around Dora. The play begins as Freud contemplates the lake scene where Herr K tries to seduce Dora, he states:

“These events project themselves like a shadow in dreams, they often become so clear 70 that we feel we can grasp them, yet they escape our final interpretation, and if we proceed without skill and special caution, we cannot know if such a scene really took place”

(Cixous 16). Freud concludes that Dora’s chaotic memory does not serve as an accurate description of events and that they are more than likely indistinct dreams indicative of her subconscious desires. While Freud expressed that Dora’s disorganized recollections during their sessions impacted her credibility, Cixous embraces Dora’s fragmented memories to symbolize her pain (Hanrahan 52). Also, throughout the play, Freud’s narrative overwhelms the audience and Dora remains relatively silent in comparison. A critical side effect of hysteria is the inability to speak and, as a psychotherapist, Freud uses his talking cure as a means to have his patients verbalize recollections and recover his patient’s lost voice. Dora’s refusal to speak signifies her resistance to masculine forms of language and she articulates herself in a distinctly feminine way by employing her mind and body. And finally, Cixous utilizes Dora’s imposed madness to depict the point in which society connects a woman’s sexuality with her otherness; within this play,

Cixous demonstrates how men attempt to control a women and their sexuality to fit normative expectations, as well as how men describe women who fail to meet their gender mold. The audience bears witness to Dora’s suppression, therefore “becom[ing] part of the system repressing her” (Hanrahan 51). Cixous makes the audience aware of

Dora’s otherness to highlight the ways in which they are participating in the collective objectification of women.

Nabokov constructs Lolita as an artistic work that ruminates on the problem women face because of masculine repression. Throughout the memoir, Humbert fashions

Lolita as a plaything to satiate his sadistic urges. Humbert does not treat Lolita as an 71 individual who can feel her cruelty and maltreatment. He uses his narrative power to control her and continues to do so even after she escapes from him in attempt to secure another life. According to David Rampton, “Nabokov shows us all the poignancy of

Lolita’s attempt to build a future for herself in a world that was not of her making. Such a scene does not ‘solve’ the problem of Lolita […] But it does remind us why Lolita matters and why we go on talking about it” (115). Nabokov writes a novel from a pedophile’s perspective in order to call attention to his heinous crimes and point out the effects on his victim. Humbert “broke [her] life” and erased Lolita’s potential (262). She managed her life the best she could in her circumstances, demonstrating the importance of rescuing her from the trauma she endured. Following, Patnoe, “if it is not enough that

Humbert repeatedly violates Lolita and that she dies in the novel, the world repeatedly reincarnates her – and, in the process, it doubles her by co-opting, fragmenting, and violating her: it kills her again and again” (82). Lolita is continually wounded throughout her youth and into adulthood. As an adult, Lolita attempts to hide the wounds from her past and move on with her meager job, her new husband, and her unborn child. But

Humbert does not allow Lolita to move on and entraps her within his memoir; with his words, and with telling her story, Humbert traps her in the narrative repetition of sexual abuse, implicating not only the reader, but the systems of power perpetuating the objectification and (violent) sexualization of girls and women .Therefore, it is imperative that modern readers recognize Lolita as a survivor of trauma in order to fight against phallocratic explanations of her character and to reimagine her within the context of feminism. 72

Such an analysis allows readers to see how Lolita manipulates her memories to regain power over herself and cast doubt on Humbert’s narrative authority. Freud believes that recollections are constant yet Nabokov states, “that a fully conscious self both fuels and is itself fueled by the ceaseless absorption of experience into memory, an on-going process in which past, present, and future are figured in dynamic interdependency and not simply succession” (Hasty 226-227). To Nabokov, there is not a sharp distinction between memory and awareness. With his memoir, Humbert attempts to tell the story of his life and time with Lolita, but his tale is rife with his own thoughts, remembrances, and interpretations of events. Overall, Humbert fashions Lolita as a muted creature to be controlled by himself. Yet Lolita’s response to her memories firmly places her autonomy outside of Humbert’s command: “’Perhaps he is a Trapp. If I were you –

Oh look, all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid,’ she continued unexpectedly, ‘I used to think they’d stop and go back to nines, if only my mother agreed to put the car in reverse’” (205). Lolita ponders what would happen to the numbers if the car reversed: would they roll back? Lolita lost her mother, her childhood, and the rest of her life because of Humbert and these are memories that she cannot erase.

Underneath the surface of her words, she wonders if her anguish would disappear if she could turn back time. If she could fold time back, she could return to a time where she had control over her own self and story, as well as release herself from her pain.

Likewise, Lolita uses her graphic novels for escapism. One work she reads tells the story of Marion: “There was a gloomy girl Marion, […] [and] Marion’s dead mother had really been a heroic woman since she had deliberately dissimulated her great love for Marion because she was dying, and did not want her child to miss her” (270). In the beginning of 73 the novel, Humbert alludes that Lolita and her mother, Charlotte, do not have the closest or most loving relationship; in all of his accounts, he depicts Charlotte as a woman who is both irritated with, and jealous of, her daughter, intentionally placing the women at odds in a battle he will win. By recalling Marion, a tale of mother-daughter love and empowerment, Lolita reverses Humbert’s patriarchal vision by imagining herself as

Marion. In her conscious, she becomes Marion and alters her reality; she becomes a girl who knows love and is protected by her mother. Lolita’s visualization places her in an ideal world where she is genuinely loved – a place she has not known in her life.

Therefore, Lolita takes autonomy over her mind and her own memories and undermines

Humbert’s authorial agency in doing so.

Lolita experiences trauma at the hands of her captor, Humbert; many readings portray Lolita as a voiceless victim against Humbert’s emotional, physical, and narrative assaults, yet her silence gives way to resounding power when she confronts him for his abuse. Lolita does not articulate her emotions directly throughout the memoir very often and seems to be a passive prey for Humbert. Yet Lolita’s intermittent, indignant comments directed at Humbert allude that her silence is a form of resistance. For instance, Lolita condemns Humbert for ruining her life, giving a voice to her subjugation.

After Lolita’s abduction, she out rightly expresses herself to Humbert: “You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me. I ought to call the police and tell them you raped me. Oh, you dirty, dirty old man” (132). Humbert’s narrative makes the reader believe that Lolita is playing mind games with him and he casts off her words. Lolita does not call the police, fails to leave his clutches, and her anger seemingly wanes. Humbert’s mind interprets Lolita’s passive actions as 74 acquiescence and shrugs off her ‘child-like’ tantrum. Subsequently, Humbert devastates the remaining vestiges of Lolita’s childhood with rape. Yet Lolita eventually rises against

Humbert’s control:

She said she loathed me. She made monstrous faces at me, inflating her

cheeks and producing a diabolical plopping sound. She said I had attempted

to violate her several times when I was her mother’s roomer. She said she

was sure that I had murdered her mother. She said she would sleep with the

very first fellow who asked her and I could do nothing about it. (192)

Humbert accuses Lolita of trying to run away from him and, in a jealous rage, he tries to confine her to the house. Lolita responds to Humbert with unrestrained fury. While

Humbert does not outrightly use Lolita’s actual voice in this instance, her portrayal and implied tone rings clear in the narration. She flushes red with anger and slings vitriolic claims at Humbert. She tells him that she was aware of all the times he attempted to molest her while he was a boarder, as well as that she absolutely knew that he murdered her mother. She even claims ownership of her body, denying Humbert’s sexual claim over her.

Lolita transforms into a woman who fights against her abductor, seeking freedom and autonomy from the confines of Humbert’s obsession; instead, she challenges Humbert as her own owner.

Claiming her voice, speaking truth to power, Lolita resists the subaltern identity

Humbert has created for her. As “other,” women are in a constant quest to recover their own voice and agency, which was forcefully taken away from them by the patriarchy.

Patnoe’s feminist argument about Lolita emphasizes that Humbert’s narrative even condemns cultural mores concerning women’s sexuality: “The Lolita Story and its 75 discourse have become an ongoing and revealing cultural narrative, a myth appropriated in ways that validate male sexuality and punish female sexuality, letting some people avoid the consequences of their desires as they impose desire on others” (84). Society celebrates masculine sensuality but deems women who express sexuality with an otherness, punishing any who display sexuality and behaviors outside of their prescribed gender roles. Humbert depicts Lolita with eroticism beyond her childhood years to convince the reader that he is not responsible for his sexual transgressions against her. Yet Humber’s perspective shifts when he encounters Lolita years later and he inadvertently shows how he was responsible for her portrayal. For example, the last time that Humbert sees Lolita is at her small house.

She is seventeen years old, “with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her gooseflesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits […] she was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I rolled myself upon with such cries in the past” (261). Lolita is no longer the ‘nymphet’ he remembers as she has been replaced by an adult version of herself. He contends that he loves Lolita but his critique on her body tells the audience that his drive was merely to consume her, not love her; to Humbert, Lolita’s body acts as an object and source of pleasure for him. Lolita reclaims her body in a subsequent conversation with Humbert. Although Lolita participates in a casual exchange with Humbert, her body language and reactions attest to the trauma she endured at Humbert’s hand and its imprint on her psyche. At first, Lolita keeps their discussion airy and nonchalant. When Humbert attempts to give Lolita money, Lolita’s tone shifts and she becomes defensive. Lolita asks Humbert why he wants to give her money: “’You mean,’ she said opening her eyes and raising herself slightly, the snake that may strike, ‘you mean you will give us [us] that money if I go with you to a motel. Is that 76 what you mean?’” (262). She becomes angry when he offers her money because she believes that the money is in exchange for sex. He seems surprised by Lolita’s behavior but, because of her childhood development, men only ever used her body. Humbert used

Lolita for her childhood sexuality and provided her with a ‘father figure’ and Quilty traded the potential of fame for sex. Lolita grew up with the belief that men would only provide her with anything of worth if she gave into their sordid requests. Humbert expects Lolita to be the ‘nymphet’ of her youth yet rears back when she violates his imaginations. Linda

Kauffman states that Humbert turned Lolita into a prostitute by exploiting her sexuality as a child: “Lolita is as much the object consumed by Humbert as she is the product of her culture. And if she is hooked, he is the one who turns her into a hooker” (160). Lolita is a product of a misogynistic culture that values her as an object. Because society treats her as an object, she feels and acts as such because she is unable to cast off societal projections.

Humbert and so many men objectify Lolita for her youth and demean her body, which permanently disfigures Lolita’s identity outside of her objectification. Lolita must therefore continually struggle against the feeling that her worth is tied to her sex and that she must offer something of herself in order to receive anything from men.

4.2 The uplifting feminist death

Feminists interpret Lolita’s death with varying perspectives; however, her death frees her from the constraints of her captor and gender. Humbert concludes the novel as an ode to his love, Lolita. The reader can only uncover Lolita’s death by referencing John

Ray’s preface: The preface reveals Lolita’s death. “Mrs. ‘Richard F. Schiller’ died in childbirth, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest” (4). Humbert expires due to coronary thrombosis on November 77

16, 1952. Lolita then dies during childbirth on December 25, 1952. She must die so that she can be reincarnated through his art, continually reliving her traumas in his memoir.

Once again, Lolita is a reticent object of Humbert’s evil intentions. As a direct consequence of her victimization, she also dies during the most vital of feminine acts: childbearing.

Additionally, her daughter is stillborn, which represents the womanly vestiges of silence passed on throughout her maternal lineage. Yet Lolita’s death is much more than a representation of her feminine subjugation. Instead, her demise frees herself, as well as her child, from the oppression of masculine hegemony. Once she dies, Lolita is no longer bound to Humbert’s authority and degradation. The male gaze perpetuated by Humbert and the reader ceases to exist. Also, according to psychoanalytic feminists, “Psychoanalysis does not allow mother her selfhood, makes her an object of service, and expects her to sacrifice herself to her partner’s fantasies about her” (Gallop 327). Motherhood fully ensnares women within their gender performance and their deference to their male counterparts, prohibiting women from experiencing selfhood outside of this identity.

Mothers become objects to both the child and paternal figure. Lolita’s fall at the end of her pregnancy liberates her from the ultimate entrapment of her gender; with her death, she subverts masculine control and definition based on her sex. Finally, Lolita is free from the oppression imposed by gender roles, free from Humbert’s narrative control, and free from the reader’s biased understanding of her life and her trauma.

Psychoanalysis perpetuates Lolita’s traumas by interpreting them with a masculine bias and stigmatizing her because of her gender; therefore, psychoanalytic feminism is the only way to recover Lolita from Humbert’s text. Freud’s Oedipus complex implies that women are essentially different than men because they lack external genitalia, which 78 suggests that they cannot fully develop through the Oedipal phases and explains their inexorable ‘penis envy.’ Moreover, Freud theorized that boys feel anxiety when they realize girls do not have a penis. The boy regards the female genitals as well as the surrounding hair, which replace the penis and represents the phallic snakes on Medusa’s head. Horror bubbles up within the boy and he is frozen to stone, realizing that he can be castrated. With an erection, the boy realizes that he still possesses his penis and masculinity.

In opposition, in her critical essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cixous implicates

Freud’s castration complex: “Men say that there are two unrepresentable things: death and the feminine sex. That’s because they need femininity to be associated with death; it’s the jitters that gives them a hard-on! for themselves! They need to be afraid of us” (Cixous

250). Freudian theory fails to encapsulate the female experience and perpetuates male authority over women because of their ‘lack.’ Cixous references the Medusa effect to argue that men to shape women’s deficiency to alleviate their own fears over the female sex; to this theorist, men are afraid of women because they represent their own possible castration and they need to subjugate women to ensure that their masculinity remains intact.

Therefore, Cixous argues that, “I write woman; woman must write woman” (Cixous 244).

The patriarchy formed language so Cixous calls for a distinctly female language to overcome the patricentric mods of expression and man’s inherit need to dominate and silence women. Women must write from their own experiences to ensure that their voices are heard and inspire other women to do the same. Cixous postulates what this new mother tongue, écriture feminine, looks like in her works, Portrait of Dora and “The Laugh of the 79

Medusa;” both works exemplify how women rewrite themselves for themselves and women.

While a psychoanalytic feminist lens can attribute power to Lolita’s voice, I assert that Lolita must be reclaimed through a new text that recreates and reevaluates Lolita and her trauma. Psychoanalysis only harms women by, “repress[ing] femininity (and not so successful a repression at that – men have made it clear), its account of masculine sexuality is now hardly refutable; as with all the ‘human’ sciences, it reproduces the masculine view, of which it is one of the effects” (Cixous 249). Freudian theory manufactures a harmful culture for women, perpetuating stereotypes about them that society feels obligated to enact. In opposition to Freud, Cixous elaborates on the importance of écriture feminine:

I have been amazed more than once by a description a woman gave me of a

world all her own which she had been secretly haunting since early

childhood. A world of searching, the elaboration of a knowledge, on the

basis of a systematic experimentation with the bodily functions, a

passionate and precise interrogation of her erogeneity. I wished that that

woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women,

other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim that: I, too, overflow; my

desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of-songs.

(Cixous 243)

For too long in literary history, men implement writing as a weapon to conspire against and denigrate women. Women are forced to write in secret because writing is considered silly and not within a woman’s skill scope. According to Cixous, women can explore themselves and unlock their full potential by writing outside of the language of men; to 80

Cixous, no longer should women be bound to the constraints of phallogocentric writing.

Alternatively, women must investigate the differences of their bodies and mind to produce a new textual form. Women writing helps restore the feminine self and create a language of its own. It seems impossible because of the masculine power over language.

Power of male language backed up by male run publishing houses who tell women they cannot write, same to capitalism. Cixous inspires a movement as a transcendent escapism for women, showcasing women’s worth by emphasizing their difference and opposition to the patriarchy. Ultimately, Cixous contends that women must destroy prior notion on womanhood, foresee a way past it, and project a new future. When women write themselves, there is no longer a “salvation narrative” where someone, typically a man, saves the helpless girl (Gilmore 668). The autobiography, or self-writing, helps the girl saver herself: “self-representation re-center[s] the narrator and displace[s] the fictions on which the rescue paradigm depends. […] No longer representative of static subaltern silence, girls emerge in these narratives as figures of sympathy represented by politically active women autobiographers” (Gilmore 668). A narrative written by woman, for herself, allows her to find her silenced voice without prejudice from the liberating party; also, this type of work helps her to overcome her forced immobility and find freedom by her own means. Film adaptations and survivor testimonies are imperative to successfully deliver complete female autonomy to Lolita.

4.3 Recovering Lolita in film and modern narratives

Films by Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne reinvent Lolita with dimension and voice by supplying her with dialogue and depictions not captured in the novel. Kubrick and Lyne bring Lolita to life and renew her presence with their films. For example, 81

Humbert accuses Lolita of lying to him about her whereabouts. The following figures portray Lolita’s response to his allegations in Kubrick’s and Lyne’s respective films. First in the 1962 film, Kubrick takes on the challenge of interpreting this controversial novel with the constraints of censorship for film makers. Yet Kubrick illuminates Nabokov’s written work through his cinematography despite such restrictions on his directorial pursuit. Kubrick shapes Humbert as a man descending into madness, while he forms

Lolita as a young girl caught in his wicked web. For instance, during one scene, Humbert drags Lolita home after performance when he finds out she skipped piano lessons.

Humbert believes that Lolita ditches her lessons to be with a boy named Roy and begins to grab at her arm and yell at her, asking where she went if she did not go to play piano with Miss Starch. Humbert plays the doting father figure but his lust for control is barely concealed in the scene. Lolita retorts with anger, shouting back at him, “Stop that shouting. I hope the police do come here. You freak!” (Kubrick 1:53:23-25). Lolita’s tone and gesticulations match her irritation with Humbert. She blatantly calls him out for his impetuousness and monstrousness. Their fight sizzles down as Humbert watches a melancholy Lolita. He begins to speak softer and plead with her to run away with him from their ‘new home.’ Yet this inspires Lolita into a frenzy of rage: “No! I hate you! I hate you!” (Kubrick 1:56:55-1:57:02). The actress, Sue Lyon, paints a vivid picture of the scene that Humbert’s memoir only glosses over. Lyon gives life to a character that

Humbert typically mutes with his narrative, crafting a three dimensional and strong portrait of Lolita. 82

Figure 5: Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1962

Conversely, Lyne’s 1997 production incurred fewer constraints with censorship than the

1962 film. The film implicitly presents Humbert sexually abusing a young girl and treating her as his personal prostitute, with the audience observing in terror. Like

Kubrick’s film, however, many of the plot points remain quite similar. For instance, in the very same scene sequence, Humbert confronts Lolita about rehearsing in the park with her friend Mona. Humbert does not believe Lolita and he is determined to find out the truth about what she is hiding. Lolita appears nonchalant at first, knowing her friend will cover for her. Humbert continues to push Lolita until she reaches a breaking point.

“Leave me alone, you pervert! […] Anyone'd run away from you!” (Lyne 1:20:55-59).

Dominique Swain matches Sue Lyon, emphasizing a performance about a young girl trapped by her ‘stepfather’ and at her breaking point. The actress, however, takes her performance a step further. Swain fully encapsulates Lolita’s anger and does not back down from Humbert; alternatively, she strikes Humbert with the full force of her rage and 83 expresses her powerful voice. Humbert smacks Lolita and she falls back to her chair in shock and hurt. Instead of cowering against his authority, she starts screaming at him amidst blows to his chest: “Go ahead, murder me. Like you murdered my mother. Murder me! Murder me!” (Lyne 1:21:14-1:21:59). Milk, a reminder of her youth, streams out of her mouth. Lolita continues to scream at Humbert until, her face wild in frenzy and fear; in this moment, the film captures just how terrified she is of Humbert and reminds the audience what he is capable of. She runs down the stairs and out the door, away from

Humbert.

Figure 6: Lolita, directed by Adrian Lyne, 1997

Lyne’s later adaption portrays a gripping, bleak tale compared to Kubrick’s earlier dark comedy, yet both films depict Lolita with a voice that rings through Humbert’s abuses.

Unlike the novel, these depictions of Lolita capture the audience as her agonizing emotions flicker across the screen. The audience cannot look away from her face and become uncomfortable voyeurs into her most traumatic life events. Humbert can edit 84

Lolita’s voice, actions, and identity but film brings Lolita to life and uncovers her in ways not achievable in the original text.

Survivor testimonies empower women to tell their stories and provides them with a voice against their aggressors. When Tarana Burke began the MeToo movement in

2016, she first sought to support and inspire survivors of sexual abuse. As the effort grew, and after MeToo went viral on Twitter in 2017 amidst allegations against Harvey

Weinstein, it also became a platform for awareness and reform: “The most powerful movements always been built around what’s possible, not just claiming what’s now.

Trauma halts possibility. Movement activates it” (Burke 2018). Many victims fear that they cannot tell their accounts because they will not be believed by authorities, family and friends, or society. However, by declaring, ‘me too,’ victims of assault can finally be heard and understood. Acknowledging the trauma allows the victims to take the first step towards catharsis. When multiple individuals stand together and proclaim, ‘me too,’ they initiate a movement to confront and stop an end to masculine violence against women.

This effort calls to an end of the perpetual trauma that survivors feel by giving them hope and helping them call for justice. Nabokov’s novel exposes the genuine need for survivor testimonies. Throughout Humbert’s memoir, he focuses on his own life and obsession with the young Lolita. Despite her attempts to break through the narrative, the most effective way to reclaim Lolita is through a testimony of her own and outside of

Humbert’s manipulation. When Lolita recalls her memories about Humbert and Quilty with a reverberating, “yes,” her tone implies that her story is so absurd no one would believe it: “Yes, she said, this world was just one gag after another, if somebody wrote up her life nobody would ever believe it” (256). Throughout the memoir, the narration 85 repeatedly reminds the reader of the many times that Lolita does not call for help and the extent of her entrapment. Lolita never calls the police or even tells her teachers or friends.

She also introduces Humbert to her husband as her father; overall, Lolita only confides to

Quilty about her forced ‘relationship’ with Humbert. Lolita keeps her anguish a secret, fearful of fashioning herself further into a sexualized object or being entangled within victim blaming. However, if Lolita wrote her story from her perspective and articulated the cruelty she experienced with her own words, she could completely reclaim her story outside of Humbert’s manipulation and attempt to heal from the events that dictated her life.

4.4 The strength of survivor testimonies

The power of survivor testimonies resonates with many women especially with the advent of high-profile sexual assault cases against Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein,

R. Kelly; with their testimonies, women can tell their stories, confront their rapists’ narratives, and inspire others to do the same. Specifically, Jeffrey Epstein raped and subjugated numerous women by using his power and authority against them: “many of his survivors were underage, there were countless others who were 18 to 23, a group of women who have been reluctant to come forward because, despite the ordeal they went through, they are ashamed and believe that the public doesn’t look at them as victims at all” (Brown 2019). Epstein chose women he could exploit without fear of consequence.

Yet many courageous women started to share their stories about Epstein and exposed him as a predator to the world. Marijke Chartouni recalls Epstein’s attack:

‘I think I just kind of froze, I was just so confused, ‘what was going on?’ I

don’t know where I am and there are staff members there, they are asking 86

very unusual questions. [Rena] initiated the assault. I just disassociated. I

remember thinking: ‘I’ve never done this before, what’s going on, I just ...

don’t know.’ […] An assistant called her a few days later and told her

Epstein wanted to see her again. She declined and never returned. ‘I just

pretended it didn’t happen. And I haven’t talked about it since.’” (Brown

2019)

Chartouni encountered Epstein at his office where he sexually abused her. Her first-hand account offers insight into her confusion and detachment during the attack made by

Epstein, allowing the audience to consider exactly what she went through during one of her most vulnerable and emotional experiences. She also provides an account of her subsequent refusal to speak about what happened to her afterwards, further elaborating on the trauma that she endured as a result of Epstein’s malice. Chartouni’s statement, just like many others who came forward about Epstein, illustrate the effects of sexual violence against women and the ways in which women persevere despite it. Similarly,

Kiki Doe shares her own story about Epstein. During an interview about her experiences, she states: “’I mean, imagine having to sort of re-invite this trauma into your life every time that you retell the story,’ explains Doe. ‘[…] and you're sharing some of the most intimate trauma experiences of your life, that continue to affect you’” (Easton 2020).

Once Doe shares her personal pain, she must share it over and over again with audiences.

She reveals that the constant discussion about her rape reopens old wounds and reopens the wound of sexual assault. This survivor shares her agony so that other women are encouraged to speak out and give their side of the story and to confront their attackers.

Chartouni, Doe, and many other women came forward about Epstein, displaying 87 immense bravery and strength. Many sexual assault victims may decide not to come forward for fear of reliving one of the most traumatizing events of their lives or for fear of not being believed.

Throughout Lolita, Humbert maintains complete control over the narrative and diminishes Lolita’s presence. With this novel, the reader can gleam the atrocities committed by a predator and reveal the genuine traumas they inflict on their victim. The reader can also see the potential ways that Lolita becomes the novel’s heroine due to her bravery in the face of adversity. Psychoanalysis and trauma theory are insufficient to support an accurate, in-depth analysis of Lolita or salvage her narrative. Feminists contend that Freudian theory aggregates women into oppression. According to Freud, women lack and are essentially different from men, affirming their lesser position in the gender power dynamic. Trauma theory also fails to account for the recovery of Lolita’s lost narrative by sharing the focal point with Humbert and his atrocities. A psychoanalytic feminist perspective allows the reader to free Lolita from the trappings of

Humbert’s narrative and control, thereby reclaiming her repressed identity and redefining her existence. Feminist writers defy phallocentrism in psychoanalysis and topple gender binaries that uphold the patriarchy with their combined efforts. In response, Cixous, claims that, “Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women into writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as their bodies” (Cixous

242). Men force women from their pens, as well as their bodies; yet women writing promotes women’s ability to command both. Cixous’s works demonstrate a call to action, inspiring women to write and reclaim themselves. By linking Nabokov’s novel with

Cixous feminist works, we can recover Lolita’s body and voice from her malevolent 88 captor. Furthermore, Cixous’s theories also encourage a modern investigation into the novel, which inspires a revisioning and retelling of Humbert’s infamous narration to focalize attention on Lolita and her story instead. As I have shown, contemporary film adaptations, through a revitalization of the text through Lolita’s point of view, demonstrate how she can rescue herself and fashion a new, visceral identity. This type of textual analysis brings Lolita to the forefront of our conversation regarding brutality against women, poignantly connecting her to the MeToo movement. Nabokov published

Lolita approximately sixty-five years ago and, to date, this novel remains a testament to the importance of the female voice in the face of male violence against women. Today, more than ever, women are coming to the forefront to show the importance of their voices, share their stories with other women and the world, and make a stand against sexual violence. 89

Chapter 5: Girl, I Believe You: Illuminating Survivor Testimonies

to Mend the Cycle of Sexual Trauma

Nabokov’s Lolita is a controversial work that inspires many different readings.

Most importantly, Nabokov uses Humbert’s memoir to critique his treatment of Lolita, prompting an important discussion about the treatment of women in literature and in society. Psychoanalysis and trauma theory are insufficient lenses to help Lolita climb out from her captivity. Yet, with psychoanalytic feminist criticism, Lolita can liberate herself from Humbert’s manipulative narrative and subvert her subjection. It is crucial to retrieve

Lolita from the text and to help her tell her own story so that she can thrive as a fully formed woman within and beyond the confines of the text. Feminist critical theory, as I have demonstrated, can also be applied to modern culture. Today, sexual assault is a prevalent topic and many survivors still struggle against their predators, the stigma of sexual violence, and expressing themselves. However, by reshaping the perception of survivors and providing them with an opportunity to write their own stories, they can start healing and trigger a new trend in the fight against sexual violence against women.

Television and film take the forefront of the march to kindle cognizance about sexual assault throughout society that is unmatched, especially after the advent of the MeToo movement and attention to the awareness platform; with their medium, writers and directors bring the survivors to the forefront, support them as they come forward and claim their powerful narrative back from their abusers, inspire others to come forward and stand together as a community, and help incite change with their testimonies. 90

5.1 The significance of the survivor’s voice

Women often suffer immensely because of sexual violence and struggle every day to overcome it. The pain lingers within their mind and consumes their daily thoughts, as shown in Audrie Pott’s and Daisy Coleman’s stories as they intertwine in the Netflix documentary, Audrie & Daisy. While Coleman never met Pott, they were connected by their narrative and both became symbols in the fight against sexual violence against women. Fifteen-year-old Pott was raped while unconscious by three boys at her school.

The boys shared photos of her rape with other students at area schools (Audrie Pott

Foundation). Pott confronted the boys by posting a Facebook status, “’These guys did

(expletive) to me while I was sleeping,’" […] ‘This is the worst day of my life’ was another” (Sulek 2013). Pott took to social media to defend herself and to express her anger at what happened to her, yet eight days later she committed suicide. Pott’s mother participated in the documentary to give her daughter the voice that the boys took away from her. Similarly, Daisy Coleman gives her first-hand testimony in the film. An older boy, Matthew Barnett, raped Coleman when she was fourteen years old at a party (“Daisy

Coleman”). Her rapist violated her in the most callous way; the following morning, her mother discovered her, “left outside on the porch, with wet hair and wearing just a T-shirt and sweatpants in sub-zero temperatures” (“Daisy Coleman”). Following this crime,

Barnett was charged with “felony sexual assault yet those charges were consequently dropped to a “lesser charge of child endangerment, arguing his intercourse with Daisy had been consensual” (“Daisy Coleman”). However, when Coleman’s trauma gained national attention, it was not outrage over her rapist’s charges. Instead, mass awareness of her case gained momentum when she reported harassment at school stemming from her 91 rape case. Coleman fell subject to caustic slurs because of the mere fact that she reported

Barnett and his crimes against her. Coleman claimed in an interview with Seventeen magazine that her classmates and neighbors called her a “bitch” and a “slut every single day” (Zoellner 2020). Coleman, inspired to help others who have been sexually assaulted, cofounded SafeBAE, became an advocate for young survivors, and prompted a viral discussion about rape and victim blaming with the Netflix documentary. Coleman, however, committed suicide in 2020 after a decade long battle towards healing. Her mother appeals to survivors everywhere, “’Please know that above ALL ELSE, she did this work for you ... She would want young survivors to know they are heard, they matter, they are loved, and there are places for them to get the help they need’” (Zoellner

2020). Her mother encourages individuals who suffered assault to keep moving forward despite the hurdles and move towards recovery because – one step at a time - it is possible.

5.2 Survivors reclaim the narrative from abusers

Docu-series also deliver a painstaking examination of predators while also granting survivors a platform to speak against their rapists. Lifetime’s 2019 Surviving R.

Kelly documentary brings the women at the forefront of the allegations against the R&B singer; as a result, the network gave them the opportunity to expose him as a criminal and finally have their voices heard by the public while they await justice with the legal system. Nigel Bellis and Astral Finnie direct this docu-series through the survivors’ perspective, presenting testimony about Kelly’s abuse and advising how those around him facilitated his behavior by not intervening and helping these women. The women’s reactions to their trauma are unequivocally depicted through the series, opening the 92 audience’s eyes to how their lives were negatively impacted by him. Before this film,

Kelly still toured with large attending crowds despite the heinous allegations against him.

A vast majority of individuals were unwilling to believe that their icon was a predator and could not believe the claims in the news. Yet few weeks after the series aired on

Lifetime, “Kelly [was] dropped by his record company. Planned concerts in the US and

New Zealand [were] cancelled (Savage 2020). Finally, the survivors’ stories were heard and they received the attention they deserved. After the documentary’s release, videotapes and sex trafficking allegations surface and Kelly is indicted on federal charges. The women in this film revealed Kelly to be a predator and changed the world’s perception of him, prompting change and actual charges against the singer. Similarly,

Netflix released Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich in 2020 to examine how Epstein used his power to abuse young women and to provide an outlet for the women who did not get the chance to speak against him in trial. The docu-series tells the tale of a rich and powerful man who uses his means to methodologically assault women and ensure their silence, as well as shares how the American financier conned his way out of detection for many years with the help of influential friends. Like Surviving R. Kelly, this documentary offers insight into Epstein’s notorious history and gives the victims an opportunity to tell their sides of the story. The director, Lisa Bryant, presents numerous victims who illuminate

Epstein’s criminal pathology and how he treated his victims. When Epstein died by his own hand in August 2019, Bryant felt shattered for the victims: “I don’t think they’ll ever get the closure that they truly deserve. He didn’t have to ever really answer for his crimes’” (Gajanan 2020). Epstein continually got away with his evil misdeeds and, even on the brink of a federal trial, found his way out of facing his victims too. Bryant helped 93 the women find a semblance of justice by giving them an outlet to tell the audience what happened to them and how Epstein affected their lives.

The Guardians of the North hunt pedophiles to protect their community and fight the trauma from sexual violence at its source. Anonymous is the Guardian’s ‘decoy.’ She manages different profiles across social media platforms to lure predators. These accounts apply fake names, indicate that she is fourteen years old on each, but showcase a normal portrait of her own youthful face. She waits for people to message her and she states, “’There are more people contacting me than I can reply to. I get at least 10 people messaging every day and the most I’ve ever received is about 30 in a day, from different people’” (“The Decoy”). Anonymous receives numerous messages per day from users, utilizing her teenage persona and building rapport with them. Sometimes, people get angry with her if she does not comply with their requests for lewd photographs: “I’ve been threatened before. One man asked for indecent images and said if I didn’t send any he’d hurt my mum” (“The Decoy”). These predators use threats of violence to get their way and intimidate her, simulating the realities that young women can face when targeted by online criminals. Once Anonymous agrees to meet these uses, the Guardians set up their trap. They meet at a nearby park with the team watching and filming the entire ensuing scene. Once the Guardians get the information that they need to take down pedophile, they call the police. While the data is verified, the Guardians claim to help arrest a couple hundred offenders: “’Our work has led to more than 200* arrests and in all that time I have never been hurt’” (“The Decoy”). This work is dangerous but, if the numbers are correct, their work has had a significant impact on their community. These 94

Guardians seek to end child sexual abuse by starting at the source and exposing pedophiles to the authorities.

5.3 Reframing the narrative around sexuality and abuse

Dick Wolf created Law & Order: SVU in the 1990s to explore human sexuality and motives for sexual criminals, pushing the limits of regular daytime television. The series follows Special Victims Unit detectives in New York City as they investigate rape and sexual assault cases, as well as special crimes for the youth, elderly, or disabled.

Some episodes are purely fictitious, while the show’s writers fictionalize real and culturally significant court cases. As of fall 2020, Law & Order: SVU premiered their twenty-second season and is the longest-running live action series with a cult following.

Wolf’s creation transformed the way everyday viewers regard sexual abuse. For instance, academic studies “Stacey Hust, a professor of communications at Washington State

University who published a study in 2015 showing that viewers of SVU had healthier attitudes towards sexual consent and a better understanding of the causes of sexual violence than those who watched shows like NCIS or CSI” (Gajanan 2020). The detectives are compassionate with victims, actively seeking to prove their truths and catch the perp. The detectives prove the importance of listening to a survivor instead of victim shaming. This show and its writers also demonstrate how, “’sexual violence does not discriminate,’” […] “’It happens in all socio-economic statuses, all religions, all cultures and all groups. It also highlights aspects, like grooming, that lead to sexual violence’” (Gajanan 2020). Abuse happens at all social intersections and puts the audience in the victim’s shoes, making the plot relatable to each type of viewer.

Additionally, the audience is also taken through the legal system as Manhattan’s 95

Assistant District Attorney, who gently helps the victim fight their case court room. This show illustrates the severe facts surrounding sexual assault but, in many of the episodes, the predator is sentenced and the victim receives the peace they need to begin rebuilding their lives. As a result, audience expects the perpetrator to face the consequences of the law. With the dawn of the MeToo movement in mass media, the world took extra notice of how survivors are treated by the criminal justice system outside of SVU. However,

“Victim blaming and shaming continue, despite the advances of #MeToo and the popularity of an influential TV show like SVU and “’Sexual violence survivors still have an uphill battle’” (Gajanan 2020). Despite the advances in discussions in film, television, there is still much work to do by turning the narrative for survivors of sexual attacks.

Maïmouna Doucouré wrote and directed the 2020 film, Cuties, to drill down into the issue of sexuality and how it impacts adolescent development. Doucouré tells the story of an eleven-year-old Senegalese immigrant, Amy, living in Paris, France.

Throughout the film, Amy struggles between her family’s traditional, religious values and the harsh realities of modern youth culture. Amy wants to fit in so badly with a group of girls who dance at school and who call themselves the ‘Cuties.’ These girls prescribe to, “Hot pants, hair dye, and twerking” (Conner 2020). The Cuties learn to dress and act like their favorite pop culture icons from television and social media. Amy follows along, fervidly wanting to be accepted by the group. However, at the movie’s culmination during the Cuties’ provocative dance routine, Amy sobs and decides to leave mid- performance. She runs to her mother and finds reassurance in her arms – everything is okay now. The film concludes with Amy adorning a basic shirt and jeans as she plays jump rope. Doucouré comments on how sexually charged culture influences young girls’ 96 self-image and distorts their ideas of self-worth, taking a stand to start a discussion about it within society. This movie intends to cause the audience discomfiture as the film explores girlhood in the throes of discovering sexuality in all of its awkwardness and hurtfulness. Like her mom, the audience accepts it and embraces Amy for what she learns from this life moment. Cuties received numerous accolades based on its screening at the

2020 Sundance Film Festival and Doucouré won an award for her direction (Conner

2020). However, Netflix bought the rights to stream the film on its platform and was set to release it worldwide on September 9, 2020 (Conner 2020). Prior to its release date,

Netflix published a poster to promote the film on its site and the advertisement went viral.

As shown in the left image in figure 7, the poster depicts the Cuties in their final stage performance with an excess of visible skin, tight clothing, suggestive stances, and sultry glances to the audience. The picture presents a stark contrast to the original poster shown in the right image in figure 7, portraying young girls celebrating in the streets.

Immediately, #CancelNetflix trended on Twitter for “promoting child pornography,”

Doucouré encountered threats to her life, and those who defended Cuties were called rapists or pedophiles” (Conner 2020). 97

Figure 5: Comparison of Cuties film posters for Netflix (left) and Sundance

(right)

Netflix’s poster fostered moral outrage before viewers could even decide to digest the film’s intent. Cuties is, “a movie about girls not wanting to be little girls anymore. About girls spying on classmates in the bathroom, girls who want to wear tight pants and hump the dance floor, […] The roughness in the slow transition from girl to woman—the fumbling, the misunderstanding, the pain” (Conner 2020). At times, culture imparts a sexuality onto all of its inhabitants including those too young to comprehend it. Doucouré also reminds the audience of the brutal truths of being a girl emerging into ‘not-quite- adulthood,’ presenting them with a glimpse into their own past and how their fashion, music, and television icons shaped their adolescence; yet the film also advises the audience how this media poses a danger to how girls evaluate themselves and their confidence, earing at their confidence if they are not ‘good enough.’ 98

Lolita opens a dialogue about not only the mistreatment of women at the hands of men, but also speaks to the maltreatment of sexual abuse survivors in society. Facing trauma head on can be daunting and, at times, it can be safer to hide from them instead of repeatedly reliving the experience. Sexual assault victims may encounter even more hurdles due to the negative stigmas associated with their type of anguish. What was she wearing? I bet her clothes were too revealing. Was he drunk when this happened? Why would she put herself in the position to be raped in the first place? Why didn’t she just say ‘no?’ Survivors of sexual abuse are met with criticism simply for being a target for a violent, deviant criminals. They are then victims of victim shaming. It is time that the narrative changes for these victims and that they retrieve their power back to tell their own stories. Survivors demonstrate immense bravery when they come forward and speak up to the world and they also help foster community by using their voices to support other survivors of sexual violence. If you’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline by phone at (800) 656-HOPE or by live chat at www.rainn.org. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, call 911for immediate help or contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by phone at (800)

273-TALK or by live chat at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat/.

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